Blog

NY Times’ op ed from Saturday, 1/31/04; should NASA find some way to maintain the Hubble telescope, when the president of the US has asked it to work on the moon and Mars? Not an easy question, when nothing NASA has to do comes cheap. Meanwhile, the little rover Opportunity is on the move in Mars…

Frank Rich’s column in Sunday NY Times on the “sanctity of marriage” – what is it, what’s with the hypocrisy about it in American society today (particularly when reality tv shows keep matching couples and then airing their weddings and so forth makes marriage a farce), and what have we come to in this world when “marriage” is just another item or issue that’s turned into a target for all kinds of pot shots. I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with Rich; I just thought it was an interesting read.

Bring on the Super Bowl; enough with the hype and the articles about how the teams match up and how this is the battle of the ex-NY Giants coaches, etc. And, while it’s nice to read about how Carolina Panthers’ Jake Delhomme is a Cinderella player, finally making it to the ball, and how funny it is that the Carolina Panthers have a player whose nickname on the ex-XFL was “He Hate Me” and how New England Patriots’ Tom Brady is a great quarterback and all that, at the end of the day, it’s about who “Survives”…

This week’s “Angel” – amazingly powerful stuff. I got so wrapped up in the episode, carried away by the storyline as it related to the whole Angel/Buffy mythos, it was so scary and graphic. The writing was so good, the acting – good delivery of good lines… So, I’m blurting all this, while I still can (so, before you move on, spoiler alert! – although, as usual, I won’t give away everything) …

This week’s episode was a sort-of further update of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” continuing ideas from its series finale last spring. “Buffy” summary – Buffywas long burdened by her role as the Chosen One (Faith, another Slayer, also shared the burden, but came to be more tempted by the dark side, so Buffy felt really alone with what she stubbornly felt was her mission alone; it didn’t help that Buffy came back from the dead twice – no one else can share in that experience). Buffy, in the season before the last season, returned from the dead and promised to show the world to Dawn, her sister who’s literally “The Key” (as, revealed in the prior season, a mystical object in human form sharing the Slayer’s bloodline so that the Slayer can protect her). But, the promise was sidelined by the latest quest. Buffy, Buffy, Buffy. Ah, but the series finale: but then Buffy unleashed the power of the Slayer to all Potential Slayers, to defeat the First Evil. Now, there are Chosen Ones; it’s Slayer (re: Girl) Power for all the Girls who have the Potential in them. The victim need not be victimized. The innocent can stand strong.

And, with Spike, Buffy’s other vampire-with-a-soul boyfriend, on “Angel,” I thought all the Buffy references in “Angel” hinted that Buffy’s story continued somewhere out there, as she was freed from carrying the burden alone; she’s with Dawn, traveling in Europe, finding more Slayers to pass on Slayer Power lessons, and finally keeping the promises she made to Dawn and her gang. More than ever, this week’s “Angel” episode was like a Buffy episode without Buffy. The guest-appearance of Andrew, the once-evil, always hapless geek of “Buffy” only enhanced the Buffiness of the episode. Andrew visits Los Angeles to help Team Angel in a serious situation (more below). Spike warns Andrew – “don’t tell Buffy I’m back; I’ll tell her when I’m good and ready.” Considering that she watched him die last season, I’m kind of wondering what Spike’s really thinking. All this Buffiness…

But, don’t lose sight of the fact that this is “Angel.” Its charactistic usual broodiness, darkness, and all-out graphic violence are still there. Team Angel, via their Evil Law Firm of Wolfram & Hart, become aware of Dana, a Psychotic Slayer – a teenaged girl so traumatized by her kidnapping/torture experience and loss of her murdered family that she has been at a mental hospital the past several years. When Buffy unleashed Slayer Power, it awakened the Dana’s Potential Power – but not in a good way. Thus, Dana goes psycho to hunt and kill anyone, particularly men, because it was a man who so tortured her when she was a child. She has the power to do more harm than good.

Spike doesn’t realize that Dana’s a Slayer at first; he fights her, and she goes more psycho, because in her mind, she’s sure Spike was the man who destroyed her; worse, she has the memories of the past Slayers who Spike killed back when he was evil. So, Dana brutalizes Spike horribly. Does he deserve the punishment, if he did indeed harmed Dana to begin with- making her the monster that she thus became? (she’s at least a feral Slayer, without the training and moral restraint – which is scary) .

Lowdown: Spike manages to talk through to Dana, before she dusts him or hacks other body parts. Dana, it seems, mixed the memories of the Slayers with her own actual memories ( she understandably knows what Spike is – but not exactly how he related to her). Angel arrives on time, revealing info that her actual torturer was fortunately taken down by the police. Spike is rushed to the Wolfram & Hart hospital. Angel tries to take Dana for treatment, but Andrew and his troupe of teen Slayers claim Dana – she is a Slayer for their custody, even if she has gone psycho.

Powerful moment: Angel and Wesley, Angel’s sidekick, protest at first. Irony alert, since Wesley would have had Andrew’s job of overseeing Slayers, had Wesley not messed things up with his overseeing of Faith and joined Team Angel. More irony: Andrew says to Angel and his man Wesley, “Thanks for helping us get Dana, but you guys are evil now; you work for Wolfram & Hart!” When Angel insists that he would call Buffy to veto Andrew, Andrew gives Angel the worst slap in the face: “Buffy knows – she authorized me to take Dana. We don’t trust you anymore.” (I’m paraphrasing; the whole presentation was far better than I’m putting it).

Andrew doesn’t have the same Angel baggage than, say, others of Team Buffy (Xander, for instance, has his trust issues with Angel), so the powerful kick at Angel isn’t nearly as strong as it could have been. And, despite the graphic violence and flashbacks, are we viewers supposed to be relieved that Spike, who was admittedly really evil back in the day, was not the evil person Dana thought he was in her own life? Is Angel finally admitting that he’s no longer on the side of Good, when his own beloved rejects him? (without Buffy being there, I thought it was real easy to imagine her discomfort with the idea of Angel with Wolfram & Hart and her fear that he returned to evil, no matter his justification of working to bring down evil from the inside; does anyone even know the sacrifice he made to do this?). And, can Dana ever be rescued, mentally and spiritually?

A vampire-to-vampire talk: Spike and Angel wonder if Dana could ever be reclaimed, since she has been so scarred by the dark side. Spike recognizes that Dana and her family were not among his victims, yet Spike pauses and concedes that his problem, pre-soul days, was that he never thought about what evil really meant. Angel highlights his own horrible past – as the evil vampire Angelus, he “reveled in evil in all its forms” – Angelus was worse than Spike, in Angel’s mind (and perhaps to most others too). Angel’s soul curses Angel to feel guilt for all the crimes he committed is his eternal sentence for those very crimes.

Spike, as other critics note, chose to have his soul back due to love (or at least something more than lust) for Buffy; he hasn’t been haunted by his victims like Angel has been – but maybe Spike will start feeling it (in the Buffy/Angel world, no one gets away with anything). By knowing what evil means, maybe Spike would now understand and truly appreciate what it means to be the Champion of Good. Will Spike learn that being on the side of good isn’t just about vying with Angel for the girl – that doing good is a good in and of itself? That fighting evil is a worthwhile goal? That there is such a thing as evil? What happened to those gray areas that Wesley was talking about the very week before? Angel has to bring his team up to speed about his concerns, but maybe it won’t happen too soon?

Next week is the big 100th Angel episode. Cool.

For Worse

Judith Shulevitz weighs in on whether or not candidate’s wives are fair game to the public wondering who to support. I don’t quite understand her rant.

I think it must be really quaint to view the family as a single entity with a husband and wife (or 2 parents) and children (with slight variances to this theme). A lot of people in today’s society to think of the family unit as 2 individuals plus accessories (could be kids, could be homes, could be anything in the world). Color me old fashioned and traditionalist, but the family unit is not 2 individuals going about their lives; it is a single entity with a common goal and working toward that common goal. The root of family’s destruction stems from the idea that our own selfish goals and needs are attainable and do not need to be sacrificed nor compromised. We are, after all, highly capable individuals living to carpe diem.

As a single guy, I believed that people ought to take advantage of all opportunities, explore all possibilities and not limit oneself. Life is an adventure and it should be lived in that manner. You know, Captain Kirk style! On the other hand, I have also maintained that one of the single most selfless acts an individual can make is to get married. How do I arrive to this conclusion? Simple. Going from a single existence (e.g. man or woman is an island) to a shared one requires immediate and uncompromising sacrifice of one’s own interest. No longer can you consider yourself in a vacuum, or make unilateral decisions about how to live your life. You know need to consider your life partner. A successful marriage requires input from another person(s), absolutely needs compromise to sustain it, and requires communication beyond your inner cranial sanctum. This is not easy to do. As divorce rates and polls clearly show, it’s neither easy, nor successful. The two individual model has been an abject failure.

So when in a marriage, it is even more important to engage in family planning (i.e. how many kids?), financial planning (i.e. more than, do I have enough to hit up the ATM machine) etc. All of this requires considering a lot of issues beyond the “me, myself and I” person. So when someone embarks upon a political journey to the White House, it is perfectly normal to ask, well, who’s his/her other (better) half? Everyone knows, that it takes a strong and successful partnership to make a marriage work.

=YC

Super Bowl’s coming. Yes, there’s football, there’s “Survivor” (coming after the football) and there are the ads in between. Hmm… Hopefully this year’s Super Bowl’s ads will be interesting; I recall not being particularly thrilled by last year’s.

The other day, I finally saw the latest Priceline ad, the one YC referred in his commentary (I think I’ve linked it correctly). Amusing!

Ad’s summary: Priceline executives are trying to bring excite back to Priceline.com. Actor William Shatner is brought into a meeting with them; they tell him that they’re taking Priceline in a new direction. “My Priceline?!” says Shatner. Said executives reassure him that it’s still Priceline, still name your own price and all that, but more; so, Shatner’s no longer in the equation? “But, who can replace ME?” says Shatner. Leonard Nimoy emerges, “Hi, Bill. Let’s do lunch.” Shatner looks up, “Hi, Len. Sure. Lunch. What? Wait. Len?!” Nimoy, the new Priceline man? Hmm. Only Spock would do in Kirk. I loved the interplay; and, Nimoy and Shatner seemed like they were having way too much fun. And, yep, Shatner’s still one scary man.

Check out Slate.com’s latest “Ad Report”: scribe Seth Stevenson reviews the Linux ads – the ones with the weird platinum little boy (Linux himself) loading up info from such wise sorts as Penny Marshall (huh? how is she wise?); Henry Louis Gates (which is cool, since it’s not often that a professor gets to be in a mainstream commercial and outside of PBS or Sunday morning news shows); and others like Muhammed Ali. The latest Linux ad has the little boy inserted in weird black/white colored photos or whatnot. Apparently, they’re not just Linux ads; they’re IBM’s way of selling the brandname on CEO’s and other such types to irritate Microsoft or something. Stevenson thinks they’re cool ads. The first one was interesting to me; the latest ones looks surreal – just my opinion. Take it or leave it. I liked the Slate article, all in all.

Ctrl-Alt-Del Inventor To Retire From IBM (Slashdot)

Dr. David Bradley, leader of the original IBM PC engineering team and creator of the “CTRL-ALT-DEL” interrupt key combo, is retiring from IBM to teach. He didn’t really place much importance to CTRL-ALT-DEL, thinking that only programmers would have any real need to use it. Little did he know that it would become ubiquious (for better or worse) in operating Microsoft products. It’s used for getting out of stuck or “blue screen” situations, logging into a multiple users system, and showing active programs and CPU usage. The technical and historical reasons for the key combo’s versatility are at this web site, but basically it’s the only keypress that can’t be paused or interrupted by something else the computer’s doing (although in practice, I’ve managed some real doozies ).

NY Times’ Quotation of the day:

“We are about to embark on what is arguably the coolest geologic field trip in history.”
DR. STEVEN W. SQUYRES, the Mars mission’s principal science investigator.

See also corresponding article. I wouldn’t think that the words “cool” and “geologic field trip” would go together, but Mars is a different world, after all.

I was actually watching a little “Smallville” tonight. Could it be – a hint of Batman – is the character making an appearance? (my favorite superhero anyway)….

The NYC snow texture was something like those Dunkin’ Donut white powder doughnut – fluffy and crumbly. On unshoveled sidewalks in Brooklyn this morning, it was ankle deep. Not that bad a commute though. In Manhattan, it’s slushy muck, with the sidewalks looking nothing like it is in Brooklyn.

I’m in a writing funk, but here are some pics of me standing in the middle of the next 5 inches of snow:

Corner of Court and Atlantic

Light and Trees

Atlantic Avenue facing east

More snow – heavy stuff. NYC public school kids have already been told of closing! (of course, I’m still bitter about never having a snow day during my entire NYC public school life, and in high school, senior year, we had this one horrible winter when it should have been closed; ironically, schools did close, one year later…).

NY Times’ Quotation of the day for 1/27/04:

“There has been an enduring idea that one day everyone would fly in space. But now young people are saying maybe we all go into space but we go mentally, virtually, electronically — we don’t go with our bodies.” – Howard McCurdy, author of “Space and the American Imagination.”

According to the corresponding article, the excitement of the Mars rovers (who are cute little things to which people are attaching personalities and sympathies) are apparently making science/astronomy nerds out of all of us. It doesn’t hurt that NASA’s website is making it easier for people to feel the attachment – the pictures are amazing and our imagination just soars with them. Maybe something positive can come out of the Mars effort, assuming that the government and politics don’t co-opt it (perhaps wishful thinking on my part).

Okay, okay, so this is the article wherein the NY Times wonders if the cold’s making NY’ers’ brains go numb. Hmm. Makes me like the other article from yesterday, with the Icelander saying that this weather was worse than what he knew in Iceland. I just don’t like the idea of my brain going numb because of the cold weather. The idea sounds like a wacky B movie or something. Besides, malapropism is a problem that may not have anything to do with the cold weather numbing our brains; a person saying she’s “preparing for winter” when she meant “for summer” may be reflecting the thoughts deep in her mind – a Freudian slip to express one’s fondness for much warmer temperatures…

NJ Nets’ firing of head coach Byron Scott was rather stunning news. I mean, it was already unsurprising that he didn’t quite care about the possible move to Brooklyn, since he was more worried about his job security (the Nets weren’t going to make any move until 2005, and Scott, understandably, couldn’t imagine looking to that year if his team wasn’t doing so hot in 2004). But, they really terminated his employment fast.

Currently watching Nova – spooky and fascinating episode on the Mayans. An oldie but a goodie. Check it out when your PBS rebroadcasts it.

I have got to stay away from political stuff already, but – as the NY Times notes – these Vermont tapes of Dr. Dean’s gubernatorial days are fascinating for the nuance he has demonstrated in the past (but has been pressed to show these days). Then again, do voters want nuanced candidates (which Kerry sort of is, if we listen to him or check his voting record) or something else?

Right now on Mars – the little rover Opportunity has landed. This is amazing stuff.

As someone who majored in history in college, the impending release of Justice Blackmun’s papers sounds exciting to me. It also shows one pro argument to being a pack rat – you get to be adored by scholars for your treasure trove. (of course, we still have to think about the one con argument, like that guy in the news who was almost crushed by his piles of stuff; you can’t keep everything, unless you’re a Supreme Court justice with a Library of Congress to which you could donate the stuff).

Well, I’m all caught up on “Angel” now, and am eagerly awaiting for more.

According to the tv guide and the commercials, this week’s “Star Trek: Enterprise” is back on a rerun, just when I was eager for it to push on already – and it’s a rerun that I didn’t particularly like (time-traveling episodes that rely on the reset button are never my favorites). Then again, feel free to check it out; the acting was good and the writing seemed all right. I just didn’t too much for the episode’s plot.

I actually watched more of “The Apprentice” last night – NBC’s shameless attempt to get viewers on a night that they cannot plug in with a mere movie. It’s scary watching office politics play out as a “reality gameshow” – eww. But, it’s hard to resist, much like most of reality gameshows. I need something else to do on Saturday nights, evidentally.

“Monk” on ABC – the return of Tony Shalhoub as the Defective Detective on network tv – yeah! a way to catch up on Season 2’s episodes when I lack cable at home. Good fun, even if I was able to figure out the murderer too easily. The fun is in watching Monk figure it out the mystery’s solution. The mix of drama and comedy is also solid as ever.

Guilty viewing television – “The Forsyte Saga”(Series 1) on PBS’ “Masterpiece Theatre” is engaging and addicting as a soapy/serious drama. Actor Damian Lewis (who was in “Band of Brothers”) is scary and empathetic as Soames Forsyte, a British 19th century lawyer who would do anything to stay with Irene Heron, a woman who didn’t want to be his wife and who has managed to enchant every Forsyte man.

The rest of the Forsytes, a Victorian English family making its way into respectable circles, has been no less dysfunctional. This isn’t as trashy as American soaps, but no less engrossing. I kept trying to avoid it, but avoiding hasn’t worked. Series 2 starts in February, right after PBS finishes re-broadcasting Series 1; Series 2 is where the Forsytes’ messiness in love and hate continues into the 20th century. I’d recommend it, especially if you don’t mind watching sumptuous historical pieces mixed with intense emotional stuff and classy British accents.