At Long Last - An Honest Soldier

I suppose there had to be one in the Army somewhere...

According to ABC News:

"There's definitely a cover-up," the witness,
Sgt. Samuel Provance, said. "People are either
telling themselves or being told to be quiet."

Provance, 30, was part of the 302nd Military
Intelligence Battalion stationed at Abu Ghraib
last September. He spoke to ABCNEWS despite
orders from his commanders not to.

The Whole Article.

This man may wind up being one of the few heroes in thie mess.

Very Proud to Be from Massachusetts Today! And, Surprised by George Will

(Yes, the title refers to two completely different topics...)

I'm happy that Massachusetts will be the first state in the union to allow gay marriages today. Way to go! This has been a long time coming.

George Will did an amazing thing in his column today - he seemed to be calling for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld! His column was a bit more obtuse than usual (and I don't always read him as a result), but he did seem to be saying that Rumsfeld had to go for the good of the country.

Well, the Smoking Gun Has Been Found - Rumsfeld SANCTIONED the Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners

Given Bush/Cheney's hypocrisy...errhh "loyalty" (towards their cronies, not towards the Constitution or the American public), Rumsfeld won't be fired. And he's unlikely to resign. This whole Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal is reeking more of Watergate than Viet Nam these days.

Remember when Colin Powell was an honest man? I used to have a lot of respect for him. I read and enjoyed his autobiography. But his public behavior over the last few months does nothing but demonstrate that loyalty to Bush and Cheney is much more important to him than loyalty to the Constitution or the American public. Such behavior is no surprise from Rice or Wolfowitz or other folks of that ilk. But Colin Powell? I considered voting for him for President in 2000. Now, I wouldn't vote for him for dog catcher.

Those of us who have expressed outrage over the whole Iraqi prisoner scandal do so because we believe in the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the UN and the Geneva Convention. In short, we have much higher standards for the behavior of our military and our government than our government does. We citizens must have higher standards and we must vote out Bush this November.

Yes, of course the Berg murder is even more troubling than the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. There's an awful lot of disgusting behavior all over the world - in Israel, in Palestine, in Afghanistan, in the Sudan, in parts of the Phillipines, in Saudi Arabia, in Iran and in Iraq. But when atrocities are committed by Americans, supported by our government and paid by American tax dollars, as an American citizen, I am all the more outraged.

I'm also really annoyed by a pro-Bush PAC using the attack on the WTC as the opening of their ad. The spokesman in the ad says he lost a child in 9/11 and he trusts Bush to do the right thing. Invading uninvolved countries, killing and abusing their citizens, trampling the Constitution with the "Patriot Act" is "the right thing?" I feel sorry for people who can't see through the actions of our appointed administration. I sure see through them.

On the Lighter Side...

Tired of all the political wrangling in the US this year? Vote for the team that's "Brave. Reliable. Resourceful. Well-traveled."

---

Always look at the bright side of life! (Gay whistling...) Monty Python resurrects Life of Brian!

If you missed it back in 1979, it's one of the sharpest satires ever produced. Naturally, it was protested and roundly condemned by the people who don't understand satire. If you do "get it," you should really enjoy it. If you don't "get it," stay home. If you live in the Pittsburgh area, it will be playing out in Oakmont at The Oaks starting on May 14. Gee, I wonder when they'll be getting Farenheit 911...? (For the curious, abcnews.com did carry the story, but didn't add the little note that ABC is owned by Disney...)

Shame, Shame, Shame - The Buck Stops Where?

[[This essay appeared in a slightly different form as a Letter to the Editor in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on 5/9/2004]]

Harry Truman would be spinning in his grave over our current administration's inability to take responsibility for anything. No apologies, no explanations (well, it's someone else's fault, of course, probably those private contractors...)

I haven't been so ashamed to be an American since Iran Contra during the Reagan administration. We're supposed to be helping the Iraqis understand that the rule of law matters! All we're showing them is that power corrupts; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness continue to be meaningless constructs in Iraq (and in many other places in the world)

We ought to all be ashamed of ourselves that we have a government which behaves so abominably against the citizens of another country.



Our Tax Dollars at Work...

The Memory Hole has many depressing photos. Albarah.Net has some even worse ones (though since I can't believe what I hear from our government about Iraq, I'm still not ready to believe all of some Arabic group's propaganda...yet, anyway...).

There and Back Again

Thursday morning, I left for Massachusetts. I've done that drive solo a number of times. It takes about 10 hours, and when the weather is nice, it's a pleasant drive. I like listening to books on tape, so I finished up listening to Stephen King's Bag of Bones. It's a fairly pedestrian "small town has a secret and they're all in on it" sort of horror story, but there's a pair of love stories involving the protagonist that are really very sweet.

Friday, my parents and I drove up to Vermont to attend my uncle's funeral. Uncle Winslow had lived in Montpelier most of his adult life, having spent his career working for the state. As Montpelier is the smallest state capital, and the church was all of about five blocks from the state office buildings, the church was completely full of old friends and co-workers.

I want to give kudos to my cousins Anne and Mardie, who gave a very moving talk about their father, and to the minister who had the intelligence to admit that he didn't know Uncle Winslow, but gave a great eulogy anyway (the minister had just come to the church a few months before, my uncle had been in Texas part of the time, then moved in with Anne a few months before he died).

I really love the recent funeral tradition of displaying photos at the reception. I saw a family photo I'd loved as a child and hadn't seen in nearly 30 years:

Trask Family, Rochester, VT, Circa 1930: (more or less clockwise) John Crawford (Sr.), John Crawford (Jr.), George, Bill, Nellie, Winslow and Caroline Trask

Between my brother's wedding last fall and my uncle's funeral, I remet many cousins I hadn't seen in years. I hadn't seen Mardie, Alan or Pam since my wedding, almost 27 years ago. It was one of those odd timing things - a bunch of my cousins got married when I was living in Pennsylvania or Ohio and had no money to travel. Some of the aunts and uncles (Alan's parents, Anne and Mardie's mother) died at times when work was quite insane and I just couldn't get away. So it was good to reconnect with them, even if the situation wasn't ideal.

After the funeral, I went up to Burlington and visited Anne and Mardie. Spending a night in Burlington was a little odd - I spent a few nights there in February, 1957 as I was born in Burlington but I don't think I spent a night there since then.

Anne Forcier, Mardie Sorensen, Laurie Mann, April 30, 2004

We spent a long time up on the widow's walk, watching the sun set over Lake Champlain. I enjoyed meeting Anne's in-laws, the Forciers.

The next morning, I took my mother's cousin Alice Bassett, out to breakfast. She's probably the relative I'm most like - she's very politically and musically active. She's at least 78 and still sings in no fewer than three groups. She was a state legislator for a few years, and used to commute to Montpelier with Howard Dean in his pick-up truck!

The drive back to Pittsburgh was a little trickier. I'd had a migraine overnight, so I was very tired. It was cloudy and windy taking the Charlotte ferry across Lake Champlain. There wasn't much traffic or many cops on 87 going south through New York, but I did have to stop briefly when a border patrol road block (some two hours south of the Canadian border) was checking cars for illegal aliens. I have mixed feelings about that sort of operation, honestly, but I got through quickly and continued on my way home.

While I made a few brief stops, I drove for over 12 solid hours. While Burlington, Vermont is a little further west than West Boylston, Massachusetts, it's somewhat further north. So that was the longest solo drive I'd ever done.

Some More Thoughts on the March for Women's Lives

On assorted boards in us.imdb.com, some of the anti-choice folks have decided to decry any actor or actress who dares to be publicly pro-choice. I got a little tired of this, so I posted the following:

I think both Mel Gibson and Jim Caveziel have gone way overboard on The Passion. It's not a movie I will ever see (well, at least it's a movie I will ever pay to see). But will I broadly condemn every action the two do? Of course not.

Vanessa Redgrave walked way over the line with her unwavering support of the Palestinians (there's plenty of blame for the ongoing mess in the Middle East, and all sides are parts of the problem). But I know she's a talented actress. While I don't agree with her politics, I respect her enormously as an actress.

I respect Julianne and Whoopi and Ashley and the 800,000 other people who were with me in DC last weekend. The 200-300 anti-abortion folks who counter-demonstrated our march are entitled to their opinion. I'm entitled to ignore them. This is still a "free" country.

There was a great political cartoon in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about this very issue (unfortunately, it's not online yet). In one panel, George Bush is pointing at a member of Al Queda and says "The Problem with You Is You Hate Freedom." In the second panel, he's pointing at a Pro-Choice Marcher, and he says "The Problem With You Is You Love Freedom."

I avoid telling people what to believe. In fact, my daughter identifies herself as a pro-life person. However, we both very strongly believe in sex education and birth control. The current administration is taking the hard line against sharing birth control and abortion information. Due to its refusal, hundreds of thousands of women, mostly in Africa, are dying. But, the pro-life people don't seem to give a damn about the people dying from AIDS, childbirth complications and botched abortions.

The March for Women's Lives wasn't just about abortion. If you listened to the speakers, it was about promoting sex education. Of all kinds.

In an ideal world, we wouldn't need abortion clinics. We'd have birth control that worked all the time. No woman would ever be raped. Women who became dangerously ill during their pregnancies could have abortions to save their lives without being made to feel a criminal. But this isn't an ideal world.

A Death in the Family and a Weekend With Almost a Million

I was out of town over the weekend, and came home to find out that my Uncle Winslow had died. It was not completely unexpected - he'd had cancer for a number of years, and had been having good months and bad months. We shared an interest in genealogy. I'll miss him.



Winslow, Bill and George Trask, Spring 1992 -- At my father's (Bill's) retirement party



Winslow, Bill and George Trask, October 2003 -- At my brother Terry's wedding

---

I spent the weekend in DC, partially to visit my brother Jeff and his fiance Rachel, and partially to attend the March for Women's Lives. This was the fifth time since 1978 that I'd been to a protest on the Mall in Washington, and it was substantially larger than any previous protest I'd been to. We probably had somewhere near 800,000 people there, meaning it was the biggest national rally ever in DC (yup, even bigger than "The Million Man March").



April 26 March: Posters Including - If You Aren't Outraged, You Aren't Paying Attention

I have been paying attention. And while I was one of the liberals who counseled "patience" at the beginning of the Bush administration, I am more outraged about the tactics of the administration every day. Just today, representatives from NASA were forbidden from making any comment to the media on an upcoming science fiction movie (The Day After Tomorrow) on global warning. Is there anything they aren't going to gag?

At the March, I was working with Jeanne Clark, who was the lead PR person for the March and one of its organizers. I ran errands and moved people around, and was also put in charge of getting the lead banners assembled:



April 26 March: Laurie Mann, Bannerer

The mall was unbelievably crowded, particularly before and after the March:



April 26 March: Post March Rally

An Athlete Who Was an Actual Role Model - Pat Tillman

While I have mixed feelings about our government's promotion and conduct of the war in Iraq, I think most of us who'd rather not see our military over there don't believe in condemning the people who've chosen to serve. And so, I find the death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan this week particularly sad. [[And it was that much sadder to learn later that his death was due to "friendly fire."]]

Until the Viet Nam War, it wasn't that uncommon for public figures to join the military. Look at the hundreds of athletes, actors and musicians who fought for their country in World War II. You can't say the same about recent wars. The rich and the famous avoid military service because it's a volunteer military and they don't "have" to go.

Despite this, both Tillman and his brother chose to go into the Army to become Rangers. Pat Tillman gave up a multi-million dollar football contract to go fight for his country. Even more extraordinary - he graduated from college summa cum laude in three and a half years. How many professional athletes can you name who not only graduated from college but graduated with honors?

I hope we remember Pat Tillman. I don't think we're going to see other young and famous and rich men go to war.

Politics, Politics and the Unrelated Joys of Rebuilding Your Domain...

This week, I read two contemporary books that were curiously related:

• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi


• Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke

Reading Lolita in Tehran is a literary look at surviving in Iran as your options grow increasingly limited. It's looking at Iran from the inside out over the last 25 years and how horrible it is, particularly for women. As much as I hate to think of any government as "evil," the Iranian government (no matter who's in charge) continues to be evil.

Against All Enemies is a very interesting book. Clarke's retelling of his time in the White House is quite engrossing, particularly his story of what it was like to be in the White House on 9/11. I don't normally buy the "scandal of the minute" book, but unless you're a worshipper of Dubya and his friends (unlikely if you're reading this site) you'll see all the bits that went into that mess of a sausage in September 2001 and the years since.

Now to get off of politics for a minute...

On April 10, 2004, my Web and mail server failed at Interland. When the folks at Interland couldn't figure out how to bring the server back by April 13, I moved all of my sites from dpsinfo.com Pair Networks. Eventually, the dpsinfo.com domain will work, but it won't be until I can straighten out a problem I'm having with Internet Solutions. Thank goodness for Pair Networks here in Pittsburgh, my new Web host.

When Will Lady Liberty Reopen?

September 11 was over two and a half years ago. The main architectural symbol of our country's liberty, the Statue of Liberty, remains closed. It is going to be at least another four months before the country determines that enough changes have been made to it to be "safe" enough to enter.

I can certainly understand why the statue was closed in September of 2001, but it's not clear why the statue has stayed closed for so long.

September 11 was over two and a half years ago. The main legal symbol of our country's liberty, the Constitution, remains under attack by the current administration. It's going to be at least another year before a more rational Federal government can throw out the "Patriot" Act. It's going to be at least another year before a lot of people, a number of whom did nothing more than be in the wrong place at the wrong time, can fight for their freedom to return home.

I could understand why it was important to pick up any would-be terrorists. But, as an American, the "Patriot" Act is contrary to our Constitution. The single biggest attack to America since 9/11 has been from our own government. Pity that.

Reclaiming Another "F" Word...

During the '80s, a word many of us used proudly in the '70s practically became practically a swear in the mouths of right-wing extremists. So non-right wing extremists often stopped using the word. Or some people apologized for using it.

No, Peter Jackson, that "f" word isn't "fantasy" -- it's the word "feminist."

I've been an ardent feminist since before I even knew there was such a word. In the early '60s, when I was just in kindergarten, I just felt that girls and boys were treated differently. It probably didn't help that I was hardly a typical '60s little girl - I was pretty argumentative, got low marks on "following directions," had dreadful printing and liked to read. Despite these "impediments," I generally got along pretty well with my teachers because they saw I was bright and liked to learn.

Feminists, to a point, have been pushed back into various closets over the last 15 years or so. The first closet was to stop using the word as a positive self-identifier. The second closet was to pretend that feminism isn't important. The 2000 election and its aftermath should demonstrate that feminism is very important.

Under "pro-life" people like George Bush, tens of thousands of poor women around the world have died or been maimed by back alley abortions or bad birth control since family "planning" agencies are restricted about talking about these issues if they received money from the US government. Hundreds of thousands of poor women have died from childbirth (more than did previously) because our government thinks appeasing the "religious right" is more important than passing out condoms.

I'm a feminist, and I'm going to be one of several hundred thousand feminists to rally in favor of family planning, both in the US and around the world in Washington on April 25. The global gag order has got to stop. The only way it's going to stop is to elect John Kerry.

One!

The point of my countdown this week has been to announce that today is my last day at Pitt. I'm starting a new job on Monday with PennFuture!

Two!

I heard Richard Clarke say something yesterday that people from our government never say:

     We failed you...I failed you...

Politicians and government officials, particularly in this administration, are notorious about saying

     Mistakes were made...the government isn't working

But it's very rare to hear people admit their mistakes. I don't blame 9/11 on Richard Clarke (there's plenty of blame to go around); I'm not convinced that terrorists can always be stopped. However, in order to have any hope of stopping terrorists, everyone needs to be more careful.

Most importantly, the branches of the government need to cooperate. When government agencies were cooperating during the run-up to the Millennium, the government foiled at least two different foreign terrorist attacks. People were being careful; they took the possibility of attack seriously. We didn't need a civil-liberties-inhibiting Patriot Act to track down real terrorists. But once the year 2000 was ushered in safely, people went back to being on auto-pilot.

I normally don't run out and buy the latest "government scandal" book, but I probably will go out and buy Richard Clarke's book, Against All Enemies, on his time in the Bush administration.

Three!

And, as of today, Dead People Server has had its 3,000,000th visitor in just over five years. Not bad for a site without any advertising and that doesn't play any stupid browser tricks...

Four!

An Unexpected Response to The Passion of the Christ

I've read many reviews of The Passion of the Christ. I decided I just couldn't see it due to its violence and historical revisionism. Many reviewers have been apologetic about the violence and completely ignored its intellectual dishonesty. The movie threw out both history and the Bible, and used the writings of a 19th century German mystic as its screenplay, presenting this one view as "fact." As a result, the fact that hundreds of thousands of Jews, slaves and political prisoners were crucified by the Romans was completely ignored. Jesus was one man in a large and non-exclusive club.

I was stunned to find a fairly negative commentary on the movie in, of all places, the National Catholic Reporter. Tom Beaudoin's "The anti-Christian Passion of the Christ" is a very eloquent look the anti-Semitism of this movie. I highly recommend it. Beaudoin is a writer and lecturer at Boston College.

Torn...Torn...Torn...

Oh well...

The Lord of the Rings movies made me a huge fan of Viggo Mortensen. I was never much of a fan of his until late in the movie Fellowship of the Ring (when he tells Frodo he would have followed him to the depths of Mordor), when I realized that, with the right director and right material, the man is a magnificent actor. I even enjoyed him throughout The Two Towers, despite the focus on the battle of Helm's Deep (in the book The Two Towers, the battle of Helm's Deep lasts about 12 pages). And he's just great in Return of the King - it is his movie, after all.

So I've been debating for months - will I bother to go to Hidalgo (which is about horses, something I really don't care about) or will I not bother (though I'm now a Viggo fan)?

Ultimately, I love history. I was pissed off by the movie Elizabeth, despite the great performance by Cate Blanchett, because the history was just so wrong. At an amazing number of points in the movie, the historical facts do not correspond to the movie. So Elizabeth should never have been marketed as "a true story."

So I've decided to bypass Hidalgo. Movie studios should never promote a movie as "based on a true story" when it simply is fiction. I'd probably have gone to see the movie Hidalgo if it wasn't being promoted as "based on a true story." Oh, and the sand storm special effect looks so damned lame. Maybe I'll catch it on cable.

As a coda to this - my friend Laura may have seen the actors/production crew at the Hidalgo premiere:

A Short, Paranoid Fantasy

Is Ralph Nader getting paid off by the Republicans to run? [[3/29/2004 - it turns out the answer was sort of, so I guess my fantasy wasn't quite so paranoid...]]

If he really gave a damn about progressive politics in this country, he wouldn't be running for president yet again...

On Volunteering and Not...

As I've mentioned in here once or twice, I've been having a longtime battle with insomnia. Like lifelong. In the past, the insomnia goes away after a few weeks or month, and I sleep fairly normally for a while. But this time, I've been averaging about 5 hours of sleep for about 18 months. This is further complicated by the fact that I'm in that lovely grey area called "perimenopause" and I've been experiencing ridiculous mood swings for 1-2 weeks every month.

After having a lot of problems for a few months, things got worse and I started getting various types of medical help. Sadly, I discovered that while some of these things worked some of the time, nothing worked consistently.

So I was told to do what I could do to reduce stress.

After much soul-searching, I decided the one fairly stressful area I could give up was being the Exhibits division director for Noreascon. This was a very hard decision, but I'm not being as effective in this area as I want to be. Further, when I get home from work, I'm usually too exhausted to do much more than do the dishes.

So, I have resigned my DHship. Deb was able to get an excellent replacement for me, Jim Hudson. I'll stay on as a member of Jim's staff. I'm still editing the Tenn essay GoH book.

I don't know what kind of Worldcon volunteering I'll be doing in the future. I've asked to be a press staff person for Scotland, but haven't heard anything. Over the next few years, I won't be as involved in Worldcon planning as I've been over the last eight years or so.

Overreaction to the Super Bowl Costume Failure

Only a boob would show her boob on broadcast television. And only a boob would rip the shirt in the first place.

I'm not that much of a prude - I adore Sex in the City, and, of course, was watching that instead of the Super Bowl on Sunday night. But the overreaction to Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake's stunt is ridiculous. Obscene behavior on broadcast TV has been going on for a while. Despite what Michael Powell says, it doesn't need an FCC investigation. This is yet another example of the Bush-led government being completely clueless about priorities.

The FCC ought to send Janet, Justin and most of the rap singers a bill for public obscene behavior and let that be that. I find the badly dressed "singers" scratching themselves in pubic to the sound of gun/drug-drenched lyrics to be much more offensive than a brief glimpse of Janet's breast.

Weapons of Mass Destruction Found in Texas!

Cyanide Found in Texas... ("60 pipe bombs, machine guns, silencers and remote-controlled bombs disguised as briefcases, plus pamphlets on how to make chemical weapons, and anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-government books.

The findings have led to one of the most extensive domestic-terrorism investigations since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

What would the UN inspectors say about this?

What about those "good Americans" chasing after random men of Middle East extraction?

While I would love to take credit for these amusing responses, Jim came up with them (after watching Aliens...)

I'm curious that the people behind this store of stuff were arrested back in April of 2003, yet we're only hearing about this in January of 2004...

Finally, Return of the King

We went to see Trilogy Tuesday last week, seeing two extended edition LOTR movies followed by the premiere of ROTK.



Line for Trilogy Tuesday in Pittsburgh

There were already about 200 people in line before we got there, so we wound up on the floor but in the center. While, at first we hated the seats, they turned out to be fortuitous. Before the movie started, we realized the folks sitting in front of us were people we'd known back in college, from the old Western Pennsylvania Science Fiction Association (WPSFA)



Lori and Tom Lane

It was neat to catch up with them after all this time.

Back to the movies, the extended editions both looked phenomenal on the big screen.



The Audience Just Before The Return of the King (remember, just about everyone in there had been in the theater for over 10 hours...)

But, after a long day of movie watching, my brain was completely fried by the time ROTK finally started at just after 10. While the movie looked absolutely phenomenal, I was having a terrible time related to the characters. And the movie seemed structurally very off. So I got a little snarky in my online comments on the movie.

However...

I did go see the movie again at a time when I'd had a little more sleep and hadn't been watching movies all day. That made an enormous difference. Instead of focusing on the problems (which exist but are fairly small by comparison), I got even more caught up by the sheer audaciousness of the undertaking. Minis Tirith is one of the most remarkable combinations of set/bigature/special effect that I have ever seen. The Nazgul attacking Minis Tirith have a huge "gosh wow" factor, reminiscent of the asteroid sequence from The Empire Strikes Back or the scene of the Mother Ship flying over Devil's Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We have been watching a classic unfold over the last two years.

Despite the spectacle, the human story is rarely overshadowed. The whole cast (except for John Noble as Denethor, but the problems with Denethor weren't all his fault) give one of the finest ensemble performances ever. Ian McKellan, Billy Boyd, Viggo Mortenson, Sean Astin and Elijah Wood deserve special commendation as "first among equals," but no one really steals the show. The movies would not have worked had the casting not been as perfect as the special effects.
It's instructive to go back into the casting archives in TheOneRing.Net and the casting discussions in AintItCoolNews to read some of the jaw-dropping rumors that went around. Keanu Reeves as Aragorn? Uma Thurman as Eowyn? The mind boggles.

There are a few continuity and editing problems in the movie. The whole Pyre of Denethor sequence is just badly handled, and the cuts between Eowyn and the Witch King confrontation and the arrival of Aragorn and company are very distracting. And the endings could have been shortened slightly. Still, the movies are just a phenomenal achievement, and I'm delighted that Peter Jackson et. al. have pulled it off.

Political Compass

This is all Neil Gaiman's fault. He said he found the politics self-test at the Political Compass site fascinating. I must say, he was right. Here are the results of my test:

It's fairly close; while I do distrust government (particularly my own these days), I distrust business and other institutions more. I do seem to lean more to the left every time I take one of these tests..

I'm Going to the Oscars!....Well, Almost...

Before I became a Hugo or Nebula fan, I was (and am) an Oscar fan. Despite the fact I have wildly mixed feelings about popular awards (don't get me started on Oscar failures, like Titanic or The Last Emporer), I have been a devoted follower of Oscar politics and the awards for many years. I can't completely blame my Dad on this, but he bought a copy of a book that had photos from Oscar winners when it was first published in the mid-'60s. I almost memorized that book; whenever I saw that an Oscar-winner was to be on TV, I made a point of watching it.

I thought going to Hollywood at Oscar time would be a way cool thing. But I'm just a movie fan - would it be worth it?

About two years ago, I heard that Lord of the Rings fans threw themselves an Oscar party. In Hollywood. What a way cool idea. So, being an ardent Tolkein and Jackson fan, I started hanging out more frequently on The One Ring.Net, where I adopted the pseudo-Tolkeinish name of "JRandomRohirrim." Due to being both early and persistent, I got tickets to Trilogy Tuesday (just two days away now!) and to the TORN Oscar Party! The TORN Oscar Party sold out about 15 minutes after the tickets went on sale, so I know how lucky I was to buy tickets for my co-worker Laura and me.

So over the next ten weeks, I'll get to do two very movie fannish and geeky things with Lord of the Rings fans. I already have a fabulous dress for the Oscar party (I wore it last year to the Nebulas and will probably bring it to Worldcon next year) and plan to take loads of photos while I'm there. Even if Return of the King doesn't win every Oscar it deserves (it already has a clear lock on Best Special Effects), it'll be really neat to share Oscar night with 700 psyched LOTR fen. And the site of this Oscar party is about two blocks from the Kodak Theater, where the Oscars will be held - close enough for an early Sunday morning stroll and some more pictures.

Who knows, maybe I'll even meet Sean Astin and Sala Baker again!

People As Political Props

(Permanent link to this essay)

People frequently use other people as props. This is most common in families - think of the way most parents dress up and show off their kids. This is a fairly innocent use of people as props. It does no harm to the child to dress the cute six month old baby as a Halloween pumpkin, and, meanwhile, the parents get "Oooh isn't she cute?" from their friends and neighbors. This can become more malevolent over time - did little Jon Benet Ramsey really enjoy being made up, gowned, and paraded at baby beauty pagents? We'll never know.

Or think of the way some older men acquire younger girlfriends or trophy wives. The way some women live through their husbands and children. There are times when people use other people for their own needs rather than letting others stand on their own.

But, increasingly, people use others as political props. The "props" tend to be people who cannot stand on their own. It tends to be done most often to women who are unable to speak for themselves. Twenty-five years ago, it was Karen Ann Quinlan. And, today, it's Terri Schiavo.

Terri Schiavo is being used. She became brain dead in 1990. Brain scans show that the portion of her brain that governs consciousness has been nonexistent for years. It is a sick parody to photograph a brain dead person with an autonomic reflex to light and then treat her as if she was conscious. She is being anthropomorphized the way a person talks to a dog and asks "Oh, does Fido want a dog bicuit?" when the dog barks.

When people are so quick to jump up and down and talk about honoring the dignity of the individual, they have robbed Terri Schiavo of any "dignity" she may have had. What happened to Terri Schiavo is extemely sad, but no one can bring her back. She'll never talk to her family, get out of bed or do anything. She's being moved around like a puppet, and her family ought to be ashamed of themselves. People are using Terri to reflect their needs. Their need for her to be alive. She may be still breathing, but she isn't really alive.

People die, and it is fascinating to me that people who say they believe in religious teachings seem the most determined to force physical existence long after the brain had died. Terri died in 1990. It's a sad view, but a realistic view. All the tube feeding in the world isn't going to bring her back.

Some day, I don't want to be a breathing husk in a hospital bed. I signed an organ donor card in 1978 and have discussed living will issues with my husband. Today, even though I'm middled aged and in reasonable health, I am filling out a lengthy living will. I absolutely do not want to exist indefinitely in a kind of "Nazgul" state - neither living nor dead. If I'm seriously injured, sure, use the heroic mesures if I have a chance, but don't keep the feeding tube going years after all real chances have gone.

I hope that any disabled people who may be reading this essay aren't reading this essay as an anti-disabled people piece. If you are reading this piece, you are conscious, you are capable of reading and comprehending the world around you. After Christopher Reeve was so tragically injured back in 1995, he was understandably devastated by his condition. But his wife Dana turned to him and said, "You're still you." That acceptance made a huge difference to his acceptance of himself after his accident. He understood precisely what happened to him. Terri Shiavo is incapable of understanding what has happened to her.

Terri Shiavo isn't the person who collapsed in 1990. To make Terri a symbol of all disabled people is just wrong. Simplistic and wrong in every way. To keep Terri breathing does not celebrate or honor life. It means that people cannot comprehend the difference between living and breathing. I don't want to be in a state where I'm merely breathing. And I would hope all adults would make the same point by thinking about and signing a Living Will and giving a trusted friend or family member a durable power of attorney.

Terri Schiavo stopped breathing in 2005, but she died in 1990.

Technical Information on Brain Death

• "Determining Brain Death," an article in the April 1999 Critical Care Nurse


• Brain Death, University of Missouri Health Care Web Site

A First Time for Everything...

I was at an early evening party in Pittsburgh tonight. It was cold but fairly clear, and a number of us put our coats on and went out on the patio to watch the moon.

I'm 46 years old, and this is the first total lunar eclipse I remember seeing. I've seen a few total solar eclipses in Massachusetts, and one partial solar here in Pittsburgh in '93. But lunar eclipses have often been at 3 in the morning or on cloudy nights, so I always missed them.

A lunar eclipse is subtle. Since they come after dark, the ambient light doesn't change. But the dark purple shadow swallowing the moon is quite striking.

I'm glad it was clear over Pittsburgh tonight, but I regret not having my camera handy.

I had a second "first time" this evening - I went to my first tailgate party tonight. I work at a college, and college students work in my office. They were planning a tailgate party for today, before the early evening Pitt vs. Virginia Tech game. Having never been to a tailgate party, I asked if I could come along. They said sure. So Jim and I went, donated beer, ate burgers and shrimp shishkebob, and had a good time before going on to yet another party.

Another Wedding!

Another wedding, another driving trip to Massachusetts (some ten hours away):

From the left, Rachel with her fiance Jeff Trask (brother of the groom), Jeff Cranston (best man), Ruth and Bill Trask (parents of the groom), Jessica and Terry Trask, Leah Bradford (daughter of the bride), Carrie Trask, Laurie Mann (sisters of the groom), Leslie Mann (niece of the groom) and Jim Mann (brother-in-law of the groom).

This wedding also went very well (see entry from early September 2003 on Jim's brother's wedding). Jessica is a hospice nurse and Terry is an ECO specialist for Network Engines. They met in a college class back in 1995, when Leah was a baby, so Terry has been her virtual Dad ever since. They got married in the same church Jim and I got married in back in 1977:

Movies...

Around getting caught up with some Noreascon 4 stuff this weekend, we went to the movies twice. We saw Under the Tuscan Sun (a mostly charming movie for adults!) and Secondhand Lions (a mostly fun flick). With Tuscan Sun, we saw a bunch of previews for adult comedies, including Mike Newell's ensemble piece Love, Actually and the new Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson movie. And, of course, with Secondhand Lions, we saw the trailer for Return of the King

Wow.

I knew what to expect. We'd already bought the first DVD of The Two Towers even though we'll buy the extended edition the day it comes out. So I'd seen the little "pre-trailer" for ROTK on that last month. I'd downloaded online video people had captured of the trailer on Japanese TV the other day, and even that looked impressive.

But seeing it all on the big screen was just terrific.

I've been hanging out some at theonering.net over the last year, the place where LOTR fans hang out. Today, they linked to a brilliant TTT review-parody - the DVD as reviewed by Gollum and Smeagol. Go read it - amazingly enough, it seems to have been written by just your average journalist for a newspaper down in Chattanooga.

A Wedding!

Jim and I were up in Massachusetts attending Jim's brother Bill's wedding:


(from left) Laurie, Leslie, Jim, Bill, Heather, Bill and John Mann

Bill is a chef down in Florida and Heather is in food/restaurant equipment sales. Jim's family keeps marrying women who were raised in Massachusetts!

The wedding was held at St. Stanislaus' in Chicopee, MA and the reception was held at the Sheraton Springfield (home of several Boskones in the late '80s and early '90s). The food was excellent!

I was hoping to drop by the Big E for a while on Saturday morning, but wound up way too busy (and, besides, it threatened to rain all day). The drive home, once we were out of the rain in Connecticut and New York, was uneventful.

Back from Torcon!

I had a much better time than I expected to at Torcon. Due to work and way too much traveling the rest of the fall, we arrived Thursday afternoon and left the following Thursday morning. So we missed any early excitement and set-up, but were around for teardown and recovery.

I'm working on getting my pictures online (there's a start at http://www.dpsinfo.com/sf/torcon03/index.html#top).

I had a very weird summer. Due to chronic insomnia, I've been moving slowly, getting upset and being generally unable to multitask. Thus, one of the first things I pretty much stopped doing for a while was blogging (as in writing - I've still been reading a few blogs every day). I hope to start doing a little bit of blog-writing in and around all the stuff I have to do over the next year for N4. I've also been trying assorted things for my insomnia (getting a new bed, trying assorted meds) and finally found a combination that seems to be working. So if I looked out-of-sorts at Torcon, except for being tired I was in a good mood for the vast majority of the week. Insomnia makes my eyes look like I'm much older than I really am (as you could probably tell from the main page of my blog for the last 2 1/2 months).

Leslie Has Graduated!

Yay!

She wound up with her Associate's degree from
ITT Tech in Computer Technology - Hardware.

Insomnia

It's worse, and I have Confluence and bunches of other things to worry about...

Anyway, to briefly amuse myself, I took the "What SF/Fantasy Character Are You?" test. I somehow managed to score as:

I'm probably too emotional, but what the hell...

Progress!

Well, I got my cholesterol retest results today.
In three months, my total cholesterol went from 253 to 215,
and triglycerides went from 270 to 181. I celebrated by having my first onion rings in three months (OK, I know that's wrong, but at least I walked there...)

We had a nice time up in Boston, attending an N4 planning meeting. There's now an Irish pub about three blocks from the convention center.

Walk to Rivendell - Eowyn's Challenge

I may not have noted it here, but I had a check-up in March that included the report that I have really high cholesterol. How high? Don't ask - really bad all the way around, especially the triglycerides. So my doctor said I could go right on a cholesterol-lowering drug, or I could try the diet and exercise route for a while. I thought I'd go the diet and exercise route.

During the first six weeks, I ate extremely well (lots more fruit than usual), went to the gym pretty regularly and walked about 1.5 miles per day (I'm walking to the trolley now rather than take the bus that stops down the block). I lost about 12 pounds.

In mid-late April, I developed a nasty sinus infection and started to slack off. I walked every day, and avoided things like candy and cheese (these are some of my favorite foods and they can really add to your triglycerides).

In May, assorted stressful things happened and I started showing signs of yet another episode of gastritis/irritable bowel. I started eating ginger snaps and mint chocolate ice cream, both of which are very soothing during periods of stress, but not good for dieting. Also, we had company, ate out a lot and went to many family parties. Despite all these things, I managed to loose about 2 pounds, and the stomach problems pretty much went away.

This week, I found kind of a cute online support system for people trying to loose weight. It's called "Walk to Rivendell." Some folks have broken down the LOTR books and estimated that it's something like 485 miles from Hobbiton to Rivendell. We want to see if we can walk that many miles between March and mid-December (the opening of Return of the King). I estimate I've walked about 125 miles since mid-March, meaning I've walked the distance between Hobbiton and the Great East Road (near Bree).

So Friday I have another blood test, and I'll get the results next week. I'll find out if my triglycerides are headed in the right direction, or if I'll need to take a cholesterol-lowering drug. In any case, I'm working to keep my activity level up and my food intake down. [[(2015: Well, I did need to go on Lipitor. After a few years of walking here and there, I started walking pretty seriously in 2012 and have walked over 2,500 miles since then. Still fat though, but at least my back feels a whole lot better)]]

A Really Neat Test

I love those online quizzes, and read about a doozy over on theonering.net. It's something of The Ultimate Geek Test. I scored a 37.47, which made me a Major Geek. I sent them some suggested questions, particularly since those of us who still use DOS daily aren't give enough Geek points for that. I also submitted one in honor of a long-time aquaintance:

Played poker with Bill Gates

Fiction Writing Fictio

I've been fighting writers block (or not) for most of my adult life. I've been writing fiction since I was a child. I collected a bunch of rejection slips from various editors over the '70s, so I stopped writing. I "relapsed" into writing a little in the late '80s and early '90s, got a few more rejection slips, but sold one story, "Muse of Fire," to Midnight Zoo, a semi-prozine, back in 1993.

And then, I pretty much stopped writing fiction. When I returned to college a few years ago, I finished my English Writing degree, and was lucky enough to have one really good English teacher (Chuck Kinder) at the end of my senior year. He was very supportive. But, when I was unemployed after college and had lots of time to write, I really didn't write all that much. I submitted my best story to Asimov's, but it seems to have gotten lost in the slush pile because I never heard back.

A few weeks ago, in the midst of lots of stress, I found myself thinking of a mainstream story I'd started during my return to college. I've been working on it pretty steadily, and while it's going off in some directions I hadn't planned, I'm still writing. I seem to do my best work on the bus - I actually outlined the rest of the novel over the last two days, and have written about 10,000 words over the last month. I seem to be doing my best writing when I have no time left to be writing!

Then, today, I found a story I'd written about 10 years ago, a companion piece to "Muse of Fire," has just been accepted by Triangulation, a little fiction journal edited for our local SF club. Diane Turnshek says she has rejected a number of stories, and is really pleased with the ones she's accepted.

So I guess it's time to dust off that other story and resubmit it to Asimov's...

Thoughts on the Lord of the Rings Adaptation

I've been thinking about writing this for a couple of months, and finally finished it today.

I posted a link to this essay on TheOneRing's movie board, and it launched quite a vigorous discussion.

Speaking of flicks, we saw X2 today. It was pretty good, though the editing was a little loose and the screenplay could probably have benefitted from having fewer characters and a little more focus. The opening sequence in the White House is quite phenomenal.

A Letter to the Editor that Wasn't Published

Back in early March, Jim wrote a very good letter to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette on the history of US-France relations. Unfortunately, at about the same time, the PG wound up printing a very similar letter with even more historical tidbits. However, since Jim's was still a good letter, here it is:

 

Our Congress has done a number of silly things over the years, but some of their actions in the last week have been so childish that they make many of us feel ashamed of them. Changing the name of French Fries and French Toast in the cafeteria to Freedom Fries/Toast was a childish waste of time (especially given all the important things they should be addressing).

And the latest move by one representative to pay to bring home the remains of WWII soldiers is both silly and insulting. The claim that, by not agreeing with us on this issue, the French somehow don't appreciate the sacrifices of our soldiers in WWII makes no sense. It also seems to imply that those of us in this country who don't agree with President's Iraq policy somehow don't appreciate the actions of our soldiers in WWII. This is absolute nonsense. This is a different war, with different circumstances, and supporting one doesn't mean that you have to somehow support the other. Nor do other countries -- including allies -- have to agree with us on every issue. Despite Mr. Bush's statements, those who aren't for us in every issue aren't somehow enemies (and can in fact still be friends)

Also, all those folks who are jumping on France over this issue need be reminded that, while France owes us a debt of gratitude for what we did for them in WWI and WWII, we owe them a debt of gratitude for our very independence. Without France's backing, we'd have never broken free from Britain in the Revolutionary War. (Yet of course 10 years later, when a new French government was involved in a very different war, we (wisely and rightly) did not back them and did not go to war at their side.)

(Jim Mann, early March 2003)

Santorum Says...

The folk(s) over at uggabugga (thanks to Leslie Turek for linking to that one!) found even more unbelievable quotes from my (gulp) senator Rick Santorum

I wish I had the time to track Rick's gaffes. Unfortunately, I don't. But if anyone else has seen anything particularly vile (which should be pretty easy given his 10+ years of making public statements) that Rick has said in public, send it along and I'll link to it here.

A Letter to the Log Cabin Republicans

[[When I get on a roll...]]

Dear folks,

I cannot comprehend a greater oxymoron in this day than "gay" and "Republican." I'm naturally something of a contrarian, but this is too much, even for me!

I used to vote more often for Republican candidates than Democratic candidates, but cannot bring myself to vote Republican anymore.

Why, just this week, one of the leading Republican senators equated incest and homosexuality (something I wrote both to him and to our local paper (http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/letters/20030424lets0424p1.asp) to disagree with vehemently).

And, apparently today, our government's representative at the UN will abstain from voting in favor of not discriminating on basis of sexual orientation.

Gay rights issues, on a federal level, will continue to fail so long as Bush and friends are in power.

I have a lot of respect for Log Cabin Republicans, but you're fighting a loosing battle for the forseeable future. Help the rest of us "out" the Republicans next year so we can all have a saner federal government!

Laurie D. T. Mann
http://www.dpsinfo.com

A Letter to the Post-Gazette

I adapted the letter I wrote to Santorum, and it was
published in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/letters/20030424lets0424p1.asp

A Letter to Rick Santorum

Yes, he's (gulp) my senator. In fact, he grew up about three miles from where I live now, a fact that does not surprise me at all, given the regressive politics of many people in Mount Lebanon.

Here's a letter I wrote to him today:


If you can't comprehend the difference between consensual sex between adults and incest, many other Americans can. Hopefully, they will remember that the next time you are up for re-election. I know I will, and deeply resent your intrusion into American's bedrooms. I continue to be deeply ashamed of your "representation" of Pennsylvania. Your attitudes epitomize the old slogan "Pennsylvania has Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in the middle."

Your views are much more in touch with the religious leadership of progressive countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran. Have you considered moving?

Oops, They Got Me!

Ohhhh, the indignity of it all!

Just today at work, I complained to co-workers that no one has any good April Fools Day jokes anymore. The Pitt News had a so-so April Fools Day issue. There was nothing particularly funny on the Web. Mebbe it was the war - no one seemed to think anything was funny.

At the end of a long day, I popped over to The One Ring, the LOTR Movie fan Web, and my jaw just dropped when I read this.

I dashed into my friend Laura's office. "We have to postpone our trip out to California next year - Return of the King is being delayed until next May!"

We commiserated for a few minutes - we're both dying to see ROTK, and had decided to go to the annual Oscar party theonering.net throws. But not now - not if ROTK can't even be up for any Oscars.

"This movie's not out yet, and I'm already tired of hearing about it," grumbled my boss, as she passed by Laura's office. She's a very dear person in most respects, with this one little blind spot.

I forwarded this lamentable news to my husband and daughter, then looked at the press release again. Something about the date caught my eye...

I clicked on a link in the story and found that, yes, I'd been had!

Oscar 2003 Predictions and Commentary

OK, for the second time in 34 years, I'm missing part of the Oscars on Sunday. Thank goodness for recorders! But, it will be weird to walk in late (for the second year in a row).

I've seen most of the major movies, will note what I haven't seen and will go ahead with my predictions anyway. For the last few years, I've been hedging my bets with a "will win (WW)" and "should win (SW)."

I'm an avid LOTR fan, though I liked Fellowship a little more than Two Towers, TTT is still a wonderful flick. And it did get somewhat robbed already - it did have the best score, costuming, cinemetography, and make-up of last year. However, in their "infinite wisdom," Oscar people who apparently didn't see both movies decided that these categories were "too similar" to LOTR. I'm not convinced that Peter Jackson himself was robbed, however, at least not for this year.

The acting categories have been quite strong over the last few years. There's only one mild embarassment in the bunch.

Performance by an actor in a leading role
Adrien Brody in THE PIANIST (Focus Features)
Nicolas Cage in ADAPTATION (Sony Pictures Releasing)
(SW) Michael Caine in THE QUIET AMERICAN (Miramax and Intermedia)
(WW) Daniel Day-Lewis in GANGS OF NEW YORK (Miramax)
Jack Nicholson in ABOUT SCHMIDT (New Line)

I haven't seen The Pianist, but I suspect I might be giving Adrien Brody a "may win" if I had. Cage's performance was the one "mild embarassment" - Adaptation is a wildly erratic flick and Cage's performance is part of the problem. Nicholson's performance in About Schmidt was certainly different but it bordered on posturing rather than performing. Michael Caine's performance in The Quiet American was quite extraordinary and very moving. Few people have seen this movie, which was supposed to have been released in the fall of '01 but was held back as it was perceived as being "anti-patriotic." The Americans, then as, unfortunately, right now, were not "the good guys." I would like to see Caine win, but it will probably be Daniel Day-Lewis for his bravura performance in the flawed Gangs of New York.

Performance by an actor in a supporting role
(WON,WW) Chris Cooper in ADAPTATION (Sony Pictures Releasing)
(SW)Ed Harris in THE HOURS (Paramount and Miramax)
Paul Newman in ROAD TO PERDITION (DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox)
John C. Reilly in CHICAGO (Miramax)
Christopher Walken in CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (DreamWorks)

I avoid ties, but, gee, this is a really tough category. Anyone could win here and I'd be happy (kind of like last year when Broadbent won). Reilly was the Broadbent of this year, giving very good performances in several different movies. Newman and Walken were also wonderful. But Cooper and Harris both went well beyond wonderful. Harris's performance was heartbreaking and Cooper's was just plain hysterical. (As much as I would like to have seen Viggo Mortensen in this category, he was probably not quite up to the rest of the supporting actors.)

Performance by an actress in a leading role
Salma Hayek in FRIDA (Miramax)
Nicole Kidman in THE HOURS (Paramount and Miramax)
Diane Lane in UNFAITHFUL (20th Century Fox)
Julianne Moore in FAR FROM HEAVEN (Focus Features)
(SW, WW) Renée Zellweger in CHICAGO (Miramax)

Another tough, tough category. I've gone back and forth on the
issue "should Nicole win best actress for a supporting role?"
because she absolutely should have walked away with that Oscar.
Her Virginia Woolf was magnificent. I didn't see Diane Lane,
but have the impression she was good. Julianne Moore was subtly
different in her two '50s housewife roles. Salma Hayek was quite
good in Frida. But I have to go with Renee because she's grown
so much as an actress over the last few years and was perfect
in Chicago.


Performance by an actress in a supporting role
(SW,WW) Kathy Bates in ABOUT SCHMIDT (New Line)
Julianne Moore in THE HOURS (Paramount and Miramax)
Queen Latifah in CHICAGO (Miramax)
Meryl Streep in ADAPTATION (Sony Pictures Releasing)
Catherine Zeta-Jones in CHICAGO (Miramax)

Another tough category, but I'd give the edge to Bates
(and not just because of the hot tub scene).


Best animated feature film of the year
ICE AGE (20th Century Fox) Chris Wedge
(WW) LILO & STITCH (Buena Vista) Chris Sanders
SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON (DreamWorks) Jeffrey Katzenberg
(SW) SPIRITED AWAY (Buena Vista) Hayao Miyazaki
TREASURE PLANET (Buena Vista) Ron Clements

Sprited Away is the best animated feature I've ever seen. If there
was any justice, it would win. But Disney has gone out of its way
to not distribute this flick, and probably isn't promoting for an
Osacar, either. Lilo & Stitch, while fun, wasn't special.
Ditto Ice Age. Treasure Planet stole ruthlessly from the
artist Dean Morrissey without giving him any credit (yes, even
worse than Lucas stole from Jim Gurney for some of the
Alderan city scenes). And Spirit looked dumb. So while
Spirited Away deserves to win, it probably won't.
(on the other hand, I said the same about Halle Berry
and Denzel Washington last year and I was wrong, so maybe...)


Achievement in costume design
CHICAGO (Miramax) Colleen Atwood
FRIDA (Miramax) Julie Weiss
(SW,WW) GANGS OF NEW YORK (Miramax) Sandy Powell
THE HOURS (Paramount and Miramax) Ann Roth
THE PIANIST (Focus Features) Anna Sheppard

Achievement in art direction
CHICAGO (Miramax) Art Direction: John Myhre
Set Decoration: Gordon Sim
FRIDA (Miramax) Art Direction: Felipe Fernandez del Paso
Set Decoration: Hania Robledo
(WW)GANGS OF NEW YORK (Miramax) Art Direction: Dante Ferretti
Set Decoration: Francesca Lo Schiavo
(SW)THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS (New Line) Art Direction: Grant Major
Set Decoration: Dan Hennah and Alan Lee
ROAD TO PERDITION (DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox) Art Direction: Dennis Gassner
Set Decoration: Nancy Haigh

These are the two Oscars that Gangs could legitimately win, and
it probably will. Frida has a slight chance because it becomes
very operatic in design in places. But TTT continues with its
fascinating world building, and ought to win the art direction award.


Achievement in cinematography
(WW) CHICAGO (Miramax) Dion Beebe
(SW)FAR FROM HEAVEN (Focus Features) Edward Lachman
GANGS OF NEW YORK (Miramax) Michael Ballhaus
THE PIANIST (Focus Features) Pawel Edelman
ROAD TO PERDITION (DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox) Conrad L. Hall

The photography in Far From Heaven was an amazing tribute to the
Technicolor domestic flicks of the '50s and early '60s. However,
I suspect Chicago will sweep a bunch of tech and major awards,
and this may be one of them.


Achievement in directing
(SW, WW) CHICAGO (Miramax) Rob Marshall
GANGS OF NEW YORK (Miramax) Martin Scorsese
THE HOURS (Paramount and Miramax) Stephen Daldry
THE PIANIST (Focus Features) Roman Polanski
TALK TO HER (Sony Pictures Classics) Pedro Almodóvar

Yes, Scorsese is owed. But he keeps getting overwhelmed by
a lucky first-timer. Rob Marshall probably can't loose. Gangs
is too flawed, the Hours and the Pianist too dark and Almodovar
too non-English. Marshall may be the only lock, though I sometimes
wonder if Polanski might win for the career he almost had.


Best documentary feature
(SW, WW) BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE (United Artists and Alliance Atlantis)
A Salter Street Films/VIF 2/Dog Eat Dog Films Production
Michael Moore and Michael Donovan
DAUGHTER FROM DANANG (Balcony Releasing in association with Cowboy Pictures)
An Interfaze Educational Production
Gail Dolgin and Vincente Franco
PRISONER OF PARADISE (Alliance Atlantis)
A Média Vérité/Café Production
Malcolm Clarke and Stuart Sender
SPELLBOUND (THINKFilm)
A Blitz/Welch Production
Jeffrey Blitz and Sean Welch
WINGED MIGRATION (Sony Pictures Classics)
A Galatée Films/France 2 Cinéma/France 3 Cinéma/Les Productions de la Guéville/Bac Films/Pandora Film/Les Productions JMH/Wanda Vision/Eyescreen Production
Jacques Perrin

Michael Moore will probably win...


Achievement in film editing
(WW) CHICAGO (Miramax) Martin Walsh
GANGS OF NEW YORK (Miramax) Thelma Schoonmaker
THE HOURS (Paramount and Miramax) Peter Boyle
(SW) THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS (New Line) Michael Horton
THE PIANIST (Focus Features) Hervé de Luze

The extraordinary thing about TTT is how well-constructed it is.
I hate war movies, and nearly 1/3rd of the movie is one long battle
scene that I can't take my eyes off of. But Chicago will probably win.


Achievement in makeup
FRIDA (Miramax) John Jackson and Beatrice De Alba
THE TIME MACHINE (DreamWorks and Warner Bros.) John M. Elliott, Jr. and Barbara Lorenz

No Award. The make-up in Time Machine sucked and while it was
certainly good in Frida, it was too subtle to be particularly
award-worthy.

Oh, right, these are the Oscars. Give something to Frida!

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (DreamWorks) John Williams
FAR FROM HEAVEN (Focus Features) Elmer Bernstein
FRIDA (Miramax) Elliot Goldenthal
(SW, WW) THE HOURS (Paramount and Miramax) Philip Glass
ROAD TO PERDITION (DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox) Thomas Newman

The nominated music was pretty unmemorable last year, but since Howard
Shore wasn't nominated, probably Philip Glass should win for
his interesting score.

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)
Burn It Blue from FRIDA (Miramax)
Music by Elliot Goldenthal
Lyric by Julie Taymor
Father and Daughter from THE WILD THORNBERRYS MOVIE (Paramount and Nickelodeon Movies)
Music and Lyric by Paul Simon
The Hands That Built America from GANGS OF NEW YORK (Miramax)
Music and Lyric by Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen
(SW, WW) I Move On from CHICAGO (Miramax)
Music by John Kander
Lyric by Fred Ebb
Lose Yourself from 8 MILE (Universal)
Music by Eminem, Jeff Bass and Luis Resto
Lyric by Eminem

This one is pretty much of a no-brainer.


Best motion picture of the year
(WW)CHICAGO (Miramax)
A Producer Circle Co., Zadan/Meron Production
Martin Richards, Producer
GANGS OF NEW YORK (Miramax)
An Alberto Grimaldi Production
Alberto Grimaldi and Harvey Weinstein, Producers
(SW)THE HOURS (Paramount and Miramax)
A Scott Rudin/Robert Fox Production
Scott Rudin and Robert Fox, Producers
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS (New Line)
A New Line Cinema and Wingnut Films Production
Barrie M. Osborne, Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson, Producers
THE PIANIST (Focus Features)
An R.P. Productions, Heritage Films, Studio Babelsberg, Runtime LTD. Production
Roman Polanski, Robert Benmussa and Alain Sarde, Producers

I'm nothing if not a realist. I liked Chicago, it was fun,
well-cast and it was great to see a real musical on the big screen
again (I don't think Moulin Rouge quite counted). But The Hours
was a very well-cast, well directed and it would be nice if it
got some notice.


Achievement in sound
CHICAGO (Miramax) Michael Minkler, Dominick Tavella and David Lee
GANGS OF NEW YORK (Miramax) Tom Fleischman, Eugene Gearty and Ivan Sharrock
(SW,WW) THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS (New Line) Christopher Boyes, Michael Semanick, Michael Hedges and Hammond Peek
ROAD TO PERDITION (DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox) Scott Millan, Bob Beemer and John Patrick Pritchett
SPIDER-MAN (Sony Pictures Releasing) Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell and Ed Novick

Achievement in sound editing
(SW, WW) THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS (New Line) Ethan Van der Ryn and Michael Hopkins
MINORITY REPORT (20th Century Fox and DreamWorks) Richard Hymns and Gary Rydstrom
ROAD TO PERDITION (DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox) Scott A. Hecker

Achievement in visual effects
(SW,WW) THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS (New Line) Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall William Cook and Alex Funke
SPIDER-MAN (Sony Pictures Releasing) John Dykstra, Scott Stokdyk, Anthony LaMolinara and John Frazier
STAR WARS EPISODE II ATTACK OF THE CLONES (20th Century Fox) Rob Coleman, Pablo Helman, John Knoll and Ben Snow

If Gollum was the only effect in the movie, it still should win.


Adapted screenplay
ABOUT A BOY (Universal) Screenplay by Peter Hedges and Chris Weitz & Paul Weitz
ADAPTATION (Sony Pictures Releasing) Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman
CHICAGO (Miramax) Screenplay by Bill Condon
(SW,WW) THE HOURS (Paramount and Miramax) Screenplay by David Hare
THE PIANIST (Focus Features) Screenplay by Ronald Harwood

This may go to Chicago, but...
Adaptation was certainly interesting, but it was just such a departure
from The Orchid Thief that it really isn't much of a adaptation.


Original screenplay
(SW,WW) FAR FROM HEAVEN (Focus Features) Written by Todd Haynes
GANGS OF NEW YORK (Miramax) Screenplay by Jay Cocks and Steve Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan
Story by Jay Cocks
MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING (IFC/Gold Circle Films) Written by Nia Vardalos
TALK TO HER (Sony Pictures Classics) Written by Pedro Almodóvar
Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN (IFC Films) Written by Carlos Cuarón and Alfonso Cuarón

I enjoyed My Big Fat Greek Wedding, it was a fun movie, but seeing it
nominated just because it made a pile of money unexpectedly was silly.
But Far from Heaven was an interesting, adult movie, and I hope it wins.

Dune, Dune and Dune

I read the books back in '75, saw the first movie in '84, but didn't see the Sci Fi Channel miniseries remake until just now.

The books have the strength of being quite original (for their time), the Lynch version has the strength of a generally better cast and better overall design, but the miniseries has a better sense of scope. The main weakness in the miniseries is that Jessica and Paul look too close in age; there is this awkward chemistry between them you didn't get from Kyle McLaughlin and Francesca Annis 20 years ago. Oh, and those funny hats so many of the characters (especially the Bene Gesseret) wear.

While 2 1/2 hours was probably too short for the Dune movie in 1984, 6 hours seems too long for the miniseries. Irulan, for example, was better as a background character in the book and the Lynch version than almost a lead character in the miniseries.

I look forward to seeing the Children of Dune miniseries though. I rather like Dune Messiah (a book generally disliked), a book that will be part of the next miniseries. I'm intrigued that Alice Krige (aka the Borg Queen) will play the Lady Jessica, along with Susan Sarandon as Wensicia.

Thank goodness for PVR as both Six Feet Under (my favorite show) will be on against Children of Dune on Sunday, along with the very interesting-looking Normal on HBO. [sigh]

Greetings from Snowkone!

Yes, Boskone happened in Boston for the first time since 1987. There were either one or two fire alarms, but the hotel didn't take them personally... ;-> The con went pretty well, and Sharon Sbarsky now holds the record of running the world's longest Boskone.

This morning, to the surprise of absolutely no one, flights out of Boston were cancelled due to the closure of airports due to the Presidents Day Blizzard. At about 9am, it finally started to snow here. Then, after more than 12 hours, we had more than a foot of snow in downtown Boston.

This has turned Boskone into Snowkone, since there are about 50 of us at the Sheraton who couldn't leave Boston today. We have a con suite (Sharon's room), a flyer (in progress), possible badges, a day-long program in the bar, et.c. We might have some photos as Del Cotter, John Lorenz and Bill Jensen all had cameras.

New Line Cinema - What Were They Thinking?

I've been to see The Two Towers four times (so far). It's a glorious movie, but in order to see the movie, you have to see way too many bad trailers. This tendency to preload potentially popular movies with bad trailers is so bad that audiences have been known to start yelling at the screen after a few minutes (in fact, Jim reported a full half hour of commercials and trailers before the premiere showing of The Two Towers).

What were they thinking? How can the same company with the vision to bankroll Peter Jackson's dream to the tune of nearly 1/3rd of a billion dollars (and still make money at it), be the same company to make:

Final Destination 2

When Harry Met Lloyd (Dumb vs. Dumber II)

A Man Apart (the next Vin Diesel flick)

And I thought they were also responsible for the outrageously stupid concept movie, The Core (since I've been subjected to this preview every time I've gone to see The Two Towers), but it turns out that Paramount is to blame for what looks to be the most ludicrous waste of a studio's money since Battlefield Earth.

Now it turns out that New Line Cinema did produce one other recently-released and fairly well-reviewed movie, namely About Schmidt. But it seems like everything else New Line is at all involved with (except for The Lord of the Rings movies) are pointless concept movies aimed at 14-year-old boys. Yes, I know they buy the most tickets, but if the huge success of the LOTR movies shows anything it's that kids will pay to see films with a thoughtful story and good acting.

Bad Day...

I always remember where I was when I hear really awful news.

I was watching TV a January night in the '60s when the news broke in with a special report that three astronauts had died in a fire during a training mission.

I was returning from a quick post office trip at lunch that January day in 1986, when a man on the radio said "The Challenger seems to have exploded."

I was walking into work a brilliant late summer morning, went into the vending machine area to get a soda, and a total stranger said to me, "Oh, it's a terrible day, a plane hit the World Trade Center."

I was watching Comedy Central this morning, laughing at Bill Murray in Scrooged when I just happen to check SFF Net newsgroups on my laptop. Adam Troy Castro titled a bleak message at 9:34 in sff.discuss.obituaries with "Not Again"

Terrorism, I thought. Oh shit.

Then I read the message.

"It's beginning to look like we've lost the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia..."

Shit! I grabbed the channel changer and immediately switched to NBC. And cried for about 10 minutes.

I have been a huge fan of spaceflight. I don't remember the Shepard or Grissom flights, but Glenn flew just after my fifth birthday and I remember that vividly. Space travel is an act of supreme confidence in the future - it meant we were living in the future.

I find any death related to the space program to be doubly-heartbreaking. It's sad when any person dies in the course of their work; but every death related to space travel seems to drive a nail in the coffin of NASA.

Life has risks. I just hope we don't mothball the program for another two and a half years due to this tragedy. Astronauts know that it's risky. Most Americans know that it's risky. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.

If everyone was so risk-averse, we'd still be little monkeys living on a beach in Africa.

Weird Movie Connections

I've been sick since getting home. The cold I picked up over Christmas seems to have slid into being the flu (aches, exhaustion), so I stayed home from work on Friday. I'm actually starting to feel a little better today.

Anyway, when I get sick, I tend to watch movies, as my concentration isn't generally good enough to read books. I'm not sure if this makes any sense or not, but as I was watching Witness yesterday, I found some weird connections between it and the Lord of the Rings movies.

True, there's the obvious connection - Viggo is in both. He plays Moses Hochleitner, Daniel's (Alexander Gudonov) brother. He has few lines (except for part of the "horse with one ball" story after the funeral and "hello" at the beginning of the barn-raising), is always smiling and wears a very light blue shirt. If you want to spot him, you see him most of all in the barn-raising sequence - he's the first person Daniel introduces to John Book.

Now that's a tad tenuous, so there are more odd little connections. There's little Lukas Haas, a fine actor a few years older than Elijah Wood. The sensative little boy roles Lukas got in the early-mid '80s, Elijah got in the early '90s. They even look quite a bit alike. If you check out a current picture of him in IMDB, you'll see that Lukas still has a hobbit-like face.

If some visionary director had made LOTR in the '80s, you can see Harrison Ford would have been a natural for Strider. Luckily, this didn't happen; while I like Harrison, and while he's a pretty good actor, I'm not sure he would have been up to it.

Finally, there's the "stranger in a strange land" theme, which is pretty obvious in both films.

Happy New Year!

We had a very happy holiday, enjoyed the east coast snowstorm since it hit after we were at my parents, and managed to get home in the New Year's rainstorm before the ice storm we keep hearing is coming.

I hope to start posting in the blog a little more; I've started to learn about RSS, so expect to see some changes here soon.

Why I Hate Blogger Software

I don't post blogs all that often, and just spent about 30 minutes writing about a wonderful new book called When You Ride Alone, You Ride with bin Laden by Bill Maher.

And then, I pressed the large type on the left side that said "Posts."

And, of course, I lost everything I wrote because I should have remembered to press the small blue button on the right that says "post and publish."

Weird. I've been writing Web pages in raw HTML since 1994, and it's the new technology that's fucking me over!

Safety, Again

Well, I was in Silver Spring, MD during the recent sniper episode and arrived home alive. So did my husband. So did all of our friends.

Or, as the button many of us bought and wore (thanks, Lee and Nancy!) said:

    No stupid sniper is going to ruin my convention.

And he didn't. Capclave was probably slightly less well-attended than it might have been, but most of the people I wanted to see braved the news reports and went to Silver Spring anyway.

I don't want to be too blase about danger, but the overreaction to living is getting tiresome. Some of my friends have become very fatalistic ("If there's a bullet out there with your name on it, that's it"). I'm not. Increasingly, I feel like I'm living with the religion of statistics. I'm more likely to die of a stroke in my 70s than of a bullet or terrorist action in my 40s.

Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein

So what do they have in common?

Both have a penchant for wearing military uniforms and growing facial hair.

Both are absolute dictators over small countries.

Both are irrationally demonized by the U.S. government.

Sure, we should be wary of these two, but is there any rational reason to go to war?

In the case of Fidel Castro, we've contained him for years. Despite several adventures in the early '60s, Cuba has proven to be fairly harmless. When the Russians wanted to put nuclear missiles in Cuba and the US government said "No way," the Russian government collectively blinked and nothing further happened. Rationality triumphed.

In the case of Saddam Hussein, he tried to invade Kuwait (and was thrown out decisively), murdered a bunch of his own citizens, and is suspected to be developing "weapons of mass destruction."

It's clear that the Iraqis have had some bioweapon capabilities. They gassed a few hundred Kurds for almost no reason other than to say that they could do it. But, they haven't done anything else with those weapons since the early '90s.

It's not so clear that they have nuclear weapons. It's not that easy to enrich uranium. Uranium enrichment facilities are large and easy to spot from the air. It's also not that trivial to transport enriched uranium, so it would be tough to "secretly" bring it in from another country. [[I later heard a report from an independent source (since I'm extremely untrusting about anything the Bush administration would say about Iraq) that the Iraqis probably did have some amount of enriched uranium in about 1990). And, as we've just learned from North Korea, it is possible to enrich uranium and build bombs without the US knowing "for sure" (parentetical comments added 10/25/02)]]

And how would they deliver a nuclear weapon - by the post?

They don't have missiles and their Air Force is kept pretty busy due to US monitoring of the no-fly zone.

Have representatives of al-Queda met with representatives of the Iraqi government? Probably. And have representatives of al-Queda met with other governments? Almost definitely. We don't seem to be going after other governments (beyond getting the Taliban mostly out of Afghanistan).

There is no rational reason to go to war against Iraq. While Saddam Hussein is dangerous, he's much, much more dangerous to his own people than he is to the rest of the world. Containment has worked very well, and can continue to work.[[(Comment added 2015: Sadly, the war the Americans started in Iraq destabilized the country and led to an ugly civil war. So it turned out America was much more dangerous to Iraq than Hussein had been...)]]

I keep hearing we should be afraid of Saddam Hussein. It's as if we learned absolutely nothing from September 11 - we need to be more afraid of, more wary of the enemy we cannot see. Like Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein is more bluster, someone I refuse to loose any sleep over, despite the overly-earnest pronouncements of our government.

Frankly, it's embarrassing.

Reaching Me Online

Ahh, for the good old days of the Web. You could stick your E-mail address wherever you wanted to and people would send you E-mail... ; >

Well, it hasn't been like that in a while, due to spam. I have an address that I only use to post on USENET, and I'm up to about 10 pieces of spam a day. Unfortunately, I need to check it sporadically because my ISP insists on having at least one E-mail address separate from my E-mail on their server.

I have a Yahoo E-mail I really don't use, and I get about 3 spams a day from that one. Luckily, the spam filter catches most of them.

Seeing the onslaught of spam, I took my E-mail off of my pages a few years ago and opted to use formmail forms.

Stop laughing..

What funny about that was that it turns out formmail has massive security problems. I detached my forms from formmail over the summer, but neglected to take formmail off my server. So, lo, I had a hacker try to spam others with my formmail.

sigh

So I've pulled down my Perl scripts and have downloaded a single Perl script which promises it is a bullet-proof mail utility. And I've put my forms back.

If you've been trying to reach me, I'm sorry I've been hard to contact. I'm really not trying to hide. But there's only so much spam you can delete in a day....

Contact the Webmaster.

Meeting Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman

One of my favorite books (well, the first 2/3rds of it, anyway) is the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay. I also liked The Wonder Boys and Mysteries of Pittsburgh very much. Michael Chabon also runs a wonderful Web site on top of being one of the better writers of our day.

So when I saw he was making a "stealth visit" to his former employer (Jay's Bookstall) to sign some books, I made a point of getting myself out to Oakland to pick up a copy of Summerland and meet Michael.



They were just delightful folks. I'd seen Michael in some TV interviews, but I don't remember having seen Ayelet Waldman before. She's also been writing, a series of mysteries called "The Mommy Track." I bought one of her books as well.

While I've been very lucky to meet lots of writers due to my involvement in SF fandom, I haven't met all that many mainstream writers. I met Barbara Kingsolver after a talk a few years ago, and that's been about it. So meeting a Pulitzer Prize winner, and "local boy makes good" was a real treat.

He's Probably Dead: Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden hasn't been seen publically since last fall, and he wasn't looking too good at the time. Remember, he was only 44 but was reported to have had severe kidney disease on top of living in a war zone for a few months.

And now, this:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/020910/80/d9bt2.html

Osama wasn't like Mullah Omar - he didn't completely shun cameras. He'd give a speech every once in a while or demonstrate a rocket launcher in front of video cameras.

The fact that he didn't give this self-congratulatory speech on video means he's probably dead. The fact that he has not been reliably photographed since last
fall, and isn't showing up on a recent video tape during this first anniversary of 9/11, means he's not around to worry about anymore.

But whether it's Osama or some fellow-traveler, his contention that history has been changed is nonsense. While his people did murder about 3,000 people in cold blood and ruin a few blocks of downtown Manhattan and part of the Pentagon, let's examine whose history has changed in the last year, shall we?

Americans, Europeans, et.c.: Few lifestyle changes;
more unemployment, some extra lines at
the airport, more focus on terrorism

Afghanistan: Taliban out, something less onerous in;
al Qaeda's movements greatly restricted
to caves and remote countryside (or underground).

As the crash of Flight 93 demonstrated, Americans woke out of their terrorism stupor pretty fast.

I think the best way to spend tomorrow is to try to acknowledge the hit we took without wallowing in the terror of the day. Living in terror means the terrorists win. I plan to go to work.

I don't believe all terrorists are gone, nor do I believe that we'll never have another terrorist attack. But, as I said last December, I believe we're more likely to have small-scale terrorist acts, not large flying bombs.

2013.02.20: And, OK, I was wrong on this one. Bin Laden was alive until May 2011.

Two Girls Who Didn't Die

With so much bad news about unlucky girls, I thought I'd share two stories about lucky girls.

The first one is 7-year-old Erica Pratt. You've probably heard of her. She was the little girl snatched late Monday night in Philadelphia. She was tied up and thrown in a basement. The kidnappers chose to wrap her in duct tape, which the girl was able to chew through. She escaped by breaking a window and calling for help.

The second one is 18-year-old Megan Stone. You probably haven't heard of her. A star high school athlete, she developed a virus a few weeks ago that attacked her heart. After a couple of days, she was on the list for a possible heart transplant, it looked like her heart would be so badly damanged.

But almost as rapidly as she got the virus, she got over it and walked out of the hospital with her original heart.

I haven't met Erica (though I'd love to give her a high-five for a job well done), but I do have a tenuous connection to Megan - her father was a good friend of Jim's while they were growing up. Jim plans to drop Blaine a note.

A Letter to the Editor on the Philadelphia Convention Center

The Post-Gazette published a lengthy letter I wrote
in response to an article on the Philadelphia Convention
Center. Here's the letter:

As a volunteer planner of science fiction conventions, I was not at all surprised to read "Bookings Fall at Philadelphia Convention Center" (July 7). I worked on a conference at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia late last summer, and while our conference did get off in a timely manner, it cost thousands of extra dollars in labor fees.

We were required to rent equipment at high prices that we could have brought to the convention for free or rented more cheaply elsewhere. Dealing with that convention center involved more aggravation than I have seen in 25 years of working on conferences across the country.

The article makes one erroneous point: "The center runs the risk of attracting only military, educational, religious and social organizations."

The Philadelphia center may not even attract many of these types of organizations in the future. I worked on a conference for a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia, and, as far as I can tell, we were charged as much as any corporation would have been.

On paper, the Philadelphia center is a convention-ideal site. When prospective convention planners visit the site, it looks perfect from the street. The convention center has great facilities, is adjacent to Reading Terminal Market and Chinatown and has many hotels within three blocks. But I know many of us who have dealt with the center would rather not do so in the future, no matter how great the site looks.

The Pittsburgh convention center can learn some valuable lessons from the problems in Philadelphia. Although the Pittsburgh center has a lot of potential, it has an additional problem: the location of the convention center. The city needs to understand that the area around the convention center must be redeveloped to help attract more convention business.

While our new convention center will look terrific from the river, visitors look for street appeal. They look for nearby restaurants and hotels.

With the exception of the Westin Convention Center hotel (which is a wonderful hotel with one of the best restaurants in town), there isn't another hotel for at least three blocks.

People doing planning for Downtown Pittsburgh should quit ignoring the area around the convention center and start thinking about how to attract conventions to the city.

Unfortunately, the city of Pittsburgh has done little to make potential convention attendees want to stay in the convention center area.

LAURIE D.T. MANN
Mt. Lebanon


Here's the link:

http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/letters/20020717lets0717p1.asp

Fact Checking (This Time - NPR and Scott Simon's Weekend Edition)

I am a big believer in fact-checking, particularly in public forums, like Web sites, radio shows, TV shows, newspapers...Heck, even in blogs.

This morning I heard bits and pieces of NPR's Weekend Edition while I was running errands, and heard a surprising number of errors. So here's the letter I've written to Scott Simon to complain:

---

Dear Scott,

I'm a big fan of your show, but I was dismayed by the number of errors you made in passing on this morning's show (7/13/02).

First John F. Kennedy was born in May of 1917, meaning he was 43 when he was nominated for president in July of 1960. Second, he had one child when he was nominated, though Jacqueline Kennedy was pregnant at the time of his nomination and
gave birth to their second child, John Jr., after his election in November 1960. An
almanac or encyclopedia would have helped you out here, or a Web site such as
Encyclopedia Americana:

http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/ea/bios/35pkenn.html

There were similar types of errors during your lead-in to the talk on summer blockbusters. From 1965 to 1975, I'm pretty sure the top moneymaker was The Sound of Music, not Gone with the Wind. (However, I don't have an almanac from the early '70s so I can't confirm this.)

However, where absolutely missed the mark was both you and your guest calling Close Encounters of the Third Kind a summer blockbuster. It was released in November 1977
and was not a summer blockbuster at all (though it mailed a pile of money. Check the Internet Movie Database at http://us.imdb.com).

You and your guest also missed the opportunity to discuss how movie promotion changed in the mid-'70s. There were an enormous number of television commercials for Jaws before Jaws came out - it was the first time I remember ad saturation in advance of a movie. Same thing for both Star Wars and Close Encounters.

I enjoy you and your show, but fact-checking is being increasingly ignored in the media. If you can't get simple facts right, how can we rely on you for getting the facts right about more complicated stories?

Sincerely,

Laurie D. T. Mann
http://www.dpsinfo.com

Staggering Back to Blogdom

Gee, has it been six weeks already? Time sure flies... ;->

Anyway, between having a rough time with sinuses, moving to a mostly
full-time job, and working on conventions and Web sites, I haven't had
much time for blogging. I'm still reading other people's and enjoying,
but I haven't had the time to be motivated about my own.

I am excited to be working on Noreascon 4 as
the Exhibits/Fixed Functions Division Director. I'll probably post some of my ideas here as things progress. If you have exhibit ideas for the 2004 Worldcon, feel free to send me E-mail, or talk to me in person at Con Jose.