XX Movies

It's been said that all things being equal, movies aimed at women will do better than movies aimed at men.  The reason is that men are more likely to accompany a woman to a movie, than women are to go with a man.

I wonder if that's always been true?  Perhaps it used to be that couples took a  50/50 approach to the cinema.  Then some guy movie went too far and turned women off.  Okay guys, which one of you blew it for the rest of us?  Stallone, was it you?  Van Damme, I'm looking your direction!

If that's the case, I think we may be about to see the same thing in the other direction.  Movie studios are using this principle as a crutch, unapologetically targeting women with movies no one with a Y chromosome would voluntarily go near.

Lest anyone get offended, I'll point out that I believe good films portray characters with enough realism that viewers will relate to them even if they have nothing in common.  In other words, if your movie can't be appreciated by either gender, then it's not a good movie to begin with.

So I'm glad to see that The Big Wedding had a disappointing debut at the box office over the weekend.  It seems intent to win Dumbed-Down Chick Flick Bingo:

• Slumming, older, talented actors
• good-looking younger actors
• contrived premises that would never happen in real life
• opportunities for everyone to get dressed up
• Katherine Heigl

This may finally be the end for the strategy of unsubtle pandering to women.  Now we can all agree that gender-specific movies are all bad.  And then the studios will make nothing but sequels.

Coach Is Cornered

As I've mentioned in the past, I use Twitter to alert me to pop-cultural happenings that I would otherwise miss.  Another good example was last night, when the Canadian Tweeters I follow were all, um, atwitter, with talk of Don Cherry having said something controversial.

If you're not Canadian, I'm not sure I can explain Don Cherry to you.  I can tell you he's a former hockey coach who has become phenomenally popular doing analysis during the first intermission of national hockey telecasts.  But that hardly describes him.  I'd sum him up as the exact opposite of every stereotype the world has about Canadians, except of course, love of hockey.

(As an aside, every time I type "Don Cherry" the auto correct changes it to "Don't Cherry")

Anyway, most of the Tweets were non-specific comments of amusement or anger, so it took me a while to find out what he actually said.  And yet, in order to write this post, it doesn't really matter.  Heck, I could just reuse this post the next time he says something controversial - and there will be a next time - because we all know the Don Cherry Controversy cycle: (Americans, you may find it easier to follow this if you substitute in the name "Rush Limbaugh")

• Cherry says something controversial
• Everyone condemns him, calls for his firing
• Cherry lays low for a while, doesn't say anything that would call attention to himself.
• Everyone forgets why they were angry at him and go back to thinking of him as a beloved but slightly annoying uncle.
• Goto step one

Look, I'm not defending him, or saying you have to accept what he says - I hate him as much as anyone.  I'm just sick of Canada's hypocrisy towards him; lots of people will get angry now, then go back to treating him like the god of hockey three months from now.  

What Really Grinds My Gears

Sometimes innovation comes in strange bursts.  Take disposable razors for instance.  For most of my life it was standard to have two blades.  Then a few years ago they suddenly went to three, then four, then five.  The blades were increasing geometrically, such that The Economist showed that we were on pace to have an infinite number of blades in just a few years.  So why did that suddenly happen?  And why has it stopped?  Is a six-blade razor really that much more far-fetched than five?

Now the same thing seems to be happening with automotive transmissions.  It used to be you got no more than five gears, probably only three on an automatic.  But now six-speed automatics are commonplace, with some luxury brands offering seven or eight.  Now Ford and GM have announced that they're collaborating on a ten-speed transmission.  Yes, cars have finally caught up to bikes.  Well, bikes from thirty years ago anyway.

I'd make some joke about this leading to infinite-speed transmissions soon, but that's essentially what Continuously Variable Transmissions are.  So how does something like this happen?  Did the manufacturers suddenly develop a new technology for making gears?  Or maybe they always had the ability to have huge transmissions, but only now were they satisfied it wouldn't completely blow our minds?  Or maybe some transmission engineer just said, screw it, I'm putting a bike chain and a derailleur in there.

Pop Culture

In the office I used to work in, a popular snack was popcorn.  Simple, cheap, not entirely bad for you, it makes sense.  But people seemed to have some surprising difficulties making microwave popcorn.  Specifically, they kept leaving it in the microwave too long, and burning the popcorn.  This was unfortunate in our aging office building and its poor air circulation: the popcorn misadventures meant we'd all bee smelling burnt popcorn for the rest of the day.

I couldn't figure out why this was such a problem.  People consistently left the office kitchen while their popcorn was cooking, and didn't return before it was done.  So they either couldn't estimate how long a minute is, or they couldn't remember dor more than a minute that they had popcorn going.  That seems simple enough, and you'd think the punishment of the burning smell afterward would train them to remember their popcorn through some sort of Pavlovian principles.

The only other ways to screw up microwave popcorn would be to forget to remove the plastic wrap, or to not follow the instruction to put the package in "this side up."  I'm sure the former would be destructive in an entertaining way, through the combination of explosiveness and plastic fumes.  As for the latter, I always assumed it didn't really matter which way up the package went, and the warning was just a need for control in Mr. Redenbacher's personality.  But yesterday I made that very mistake:  Just so you know the popcorn comes out tough, and the Buttery Topping leaks out the bag.  Now you know.

Pain And Gain

I can't imagine what it must be like to be Michael Bay, director of numerous special-effects laden blockbusters.  He is universally hated by critics, and his movies bring in huge revenues.  Of course, there are lots of people who are well liked by large audiences, but hated by critics.  But most of those people are famous and get an opportunity to feel the love of their many fans.  As a director, Bay is unknown except to more sophisticated audiences - the sort of audiences that don't like him. 

I can't think of anyone else where there's such a perfect alignment of people who know you but don't like you, and people who would like you but don't know you.  I suppose he's treated nicely by studio execs who appreciate the profit he brings them, but most gatherings of industry people must be really awkward.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About The Future, #7

J K Rowling, Dan Brown, Stephanie Meyer and Stieg Larsson all become household names – as authors!

Give 'Til It Hurts

Here's my idea for a Liberal Party fundraising letter:

Dear Canadian Voter,

We, the Liberal Party of Canada, don't have any fancy data-mining software to tell us if you're likely to give us any money.  We don't even know if you've ever supported the Liberal party before.  But it is statistically likely that you are a TV viewer.  So we ask you: do you really like this endless stream of monotonous Conservative attack ads cluttering your favourite shows?  Think how much more entertaining Canadian TV would be if we could afford our own attack ads in response.

Conservative attack ads used to be well-produced wonders of psychological manipulation, but these Justin Trudeau ads are cluttered and unfocused.  Their ad department has clearly gotten complacent.  That sarcastic tone in the narrator's voice when he says Trudeau was a camp counsellor?  That's like something out of a second-rate congressional district race's attack ad: Canadians deserve better.  The Conservatives are even taking old, out-of-context quotes to make it sound like Trudeau thinks his province is better than the rest of the country.  Just think what we could do with old, out-of-context Harper quotes about Alberta.

In summary, we're not asking you to vote for us, we're not even asking you to like us.  But if you want to make every commercial break into a wildly-entertaining reality show that would make Gordon Ramsay blush, we need your donation.

It's Not A Delorean, But It Still Goes Back In Time

If, like me, you park in an underground parking garage, one odd experience you will have is that the atmosphere in your car will not change as fast as the air outside.  For instance, if you're out driving on a hot, humid day, your car will have hot, humid air in it.  If the weather changes overnight to be cold and breezy, you'll still have hot, humid air in your car.  So you'll go from your warm apartment, walk through the underground garage - which is always cool and damp - get in the warm interior of your car, drive somewhere, say still wearing a t-shirt.  When you get where you're going, you get out of the car, and only then realize that it's freezing out.  It's particularly a problem in the spring when the temperature can fluctuate a lot.  So if you see someone in the next few weeks driving around wearing clothes that don't seem right for the weather, just keep in mind that it's probably still yesterday in their car.

Take My Word For It

In the two tragedies this week in Boston and West, Texas, there's been some concern about the TV coverage.  And I'd like to add my observation: there is such thing as talking to too many witnesses.

I understand the desire to talk to people who have personal experience with the event itself: you want to make the story more than just dry facts; make it personal.  But the fact is that in a major tragedy it doesn't take much to evoke strong personal feelings.  It's pretty obvious that a large explosion is a bad thing, and it doesn't take many personal accounts to bring out the horror of the event.

But TV networks seem to think that the more people they talk to on air, the more real it will seem to the viewer.  Really, the opposite is true.  Hearing one person after another recount the same basic story of shock, confusion and gore just anesthetizes us to the reality of it.

In the case of the explosion in Texas, there's the added dimension that most of the news interviews were with representatives of the local authorities.  Here you have a small community taxed to the limit by a huge explosion, and the people leading the first responders have to answer the same questions over and over to reporters all over the world.  It's not like they even have anything to say beyond the obvious, "We don't know what happened yet, but we're doing all we can." In the future, let's have the anchor in the studio tell us they have no information and let the people on the ground do their job?

alt.music.will

Will.i.am has a new album out.  As a side note, I'll point out that I'm typing this on my phone, so I didn't bother trying to type his name correctly with all the periods.  That would give the autocorrect fits - I'll fix it later.

Anyway, what caught my eye is that the album if called, "#Willpower".  Yes, the hashtag is seriously part of the name.  I mean, a guy named, "Will" calling his album "willpower" is a pretty lame pun to begin with, but a hashtag?  That's so three years ago. Why don't you just call it, "willpower.com" ? 

And that's what I don't get: how the Black-Eyed Peas seem to be teflon for uncoolness. Obviously, hipsters have hated them from the beginning, but you'd think that their awkward attempts to stay famous while milking that fame for all it's worth would have doomed them by now. Compare them to Madonna: she had to mine underground gay dance clubs for trends that would keep her relevant. Little did she know that one day pop stars would stay atop the heap using cultural touchstones your grandmother would recognize.

Let's Talk

When I was in university, I remember reading an article in the student newspaper. (Please note that the link is to a very large pdf file of the entire issue.  If you wish to page through the pages of ads for obsolete computers, the article in question is on page 19.) 

The writer was of East Indian decent, and had a bad experience in which a couple of drunks yelled racial slurs at her.  She then went to the Don (or "residence assistant" or "proctor," depending where you went to school.)  The Don tried awkwardly to reassure her that the drunks were just exceptions, and most people didn't hate her people.  The Don bolstered this argument by telling the article-writer, "I like curry."  The writer took offence at this simplistic take on her culture, and went on a long, sarcastic rant.

That article stuck in my mind because it seemed to represent the misguided way that social activism went in the 1990's.  Not to defend the Don - her ham-handed talk was insulting - but look at this whole incident from a distance.  This writer encountered two negative incidents:  A totally racist, inexcusable attack, and an ignorant but well-meaning attempt to reach out.  Clearly the first incident was far worse, but look which person got a scathing article written about her.  It sends a clear message to the straight/white/able-bodied/male: don't even try because if you're not perfect, you'll be the target.

I thought back to that article this week during the controversy over Brad Paisley (and LL Cool J)'s song Accidental Racist.  If you haven't heard, the song is a conversation between a white Starbucks customer and a black barista who take different views of the former's Confederate Flag T-shirt.  The song has been roundly criticised for being simplistic and dumbing down America's eternal debate about race.

On the one hand, yes, it is simplistic.  But on the other hand, it's a southern white guy taking a conciliatory view of race, and conceding that there are many valid sides to the story.  That sort of thing is desperately needed in the U.S., so much so that it would be good to encourage the talk even when it isn't perfect.  To do otherwise contributes to whites' feeling that they just can't win.  Just to make it clear, I'm definitely not saying that people should put up with casual racism; by all means, point out things that offend you.  But have a sense of proportion: save the worst attacks for the people who do the worst things, not the people who disappoint you the most.  To put it another way, this is the American left's equivalent of congressional Republicans' stubbornness: an attitude that we won't even talk until you already agree with us.

Ambivimatch

Definition:
in sports, a game between two competitors that are both widely hated, such that the neutral observer doesn't want to cheer for either side.  eg. Lakers vs. Celtics, Manchester United vs. Real Madrid

Be A Hated Cyclist Without Drugs

Let's say you're a waffle enthusiast.  You might be inclined to skip over the normal waffle irons that everyone else buys and get that super advanced top-of-the-line model, even though it costs a thousand dollars. 

So why else - other that extreme waffle love - might you buy a thousand dollar waffle iron?  Well, you might be a really rich person who thinks nothing of spending  thousands on appliances, so if you're going to get a waffle iron, you might as well get the best.  Or you might just be a competitive jerk who needs to beat your neighbours at everything.

I never realized any of this because my interests don't really fit this pattern.  Better music doesn't cost any more than regular music.  Better technology does cost more, but if you want something high-tech and expensive, you can always just wait a month.  And then there's cars.  You can certainly spend more to get a better car.  But even an ordinary car stretches an average person's finances to the edge, so paying many-times more for a slightly better model is not an option.  Thus, if you see someone driving an expensive car, you know they fit into the "rich" category.  On the one hand that's unfortunate: there are lots of people out there driving great cars they don't appreciate, and lots of people who would love to drive a great car but never will.  But on the other hand, at least those show-off jerks don't get a chance to show-off their cars.

I'm thinking about this after reading a bicycle review in Wired.  "Wired does bike reviews?" you ask.  Yes.   It gives them a chance to indulge their urban hippy San Francisco spirit without directly offending the libertarian sensibilities of their readership.  Unfortunately, bikes are quite unlike cars in that they are a prime example of the cost extremes.  You can afford an extremely expensive bike if you're in the enthusiast or show-off categories.  But unlike the waffle iron, the high end bike is a very public purchase.  And while it won't bankrupt most people, it does reach into the are-you-insane territory.

But the main problem is that a person can not only buy a good bike, they can get into the diminishing returns territory.  This is a concept I do understand from cars.  You can buy a nice luxury/sports car for double the price of a normal car.  You can even up the price to the $100,000-200,000 range to get an even better car.  But beyond that it starts to get silly.  As I pointed out in an earlier article, you can spend into the millions on a car, but at that point you'll only be getting a slightly better car.  Of course with cars, by the time your wealth has gotten to the point where you spend an extra million dollars to take another half-second off your zero-to-sixty time, you've probably left normality behind long ago.  But a person of average wealth might just consider paying the extra five-thousand dollars to scrape an extra half-pound of weight off the frame.  Somehow that's crazier than the million-dollar car, since: 1) you could buy useful stuff with that extra five grand, and 2) you could achieve the same result simply by skipping the fries in favour of a salad.

Licensed To (Speak) Ill

It's always difficult to talk about a person who has recently died.  We don't want to "speak ill of the dead" and in global media where the grieving family may see our words, we don't want to make their wounds any worse, even if we disliked the deceased themselves.

Thanks to an unfortunate wrinkle, this is how my copy of the KW Record memorialised Margaret Thatcher

We're seeing this problem played out with Margaret Thatcher.  She was a highly divisive figure, who raises a lot of intense feelings.  I can understand not wanting to come down too hard on her right now, even though I was not a fan myself.  But at the same time, you have to truthfully acknowledge the effect she had on people.

What makes it worse is that we're far enough removed from the actual events of her public life that many people today don't really understand them.  Thus we are inundated with unspecific praise of her steadfastness.  That's a pet peeve of mine: we're so used to wimpy public figures we end up praising anyone who holds to their convictions, and don't examine the convictions themselves.  Really, I think that a person who worked for specific ideals - rather than playing the political game for it's own sake - wouldn't want such generic praise.

Personally, Thatcher's effect on my life was twofold:

• The impact she left on British music (And in case you're wondering, no, they haven't forgiven her.)
• Being the main character in British satirical show Spitting Image.

And speaking of the latter, I recall they had a good spoof of celebrity deaths, which I found on YouTube.  But first, let me explain: 1) No, I don't know why the previous sketch involves Spock in Julius Caesar, and 2) Sid Little is a comedian.

This Post Is Important And Just For You

OMG!  Someone sent me important documents in an unaddressed envelope!  How do I know they're even my important documents.  But since they are confidential, I won't tell anyone else what's in my unaddressed envelope that looks just like the one everyone in my building got. 

I'm just glad they used the flag stamp to make absolutely sure it got to me.

What's The Word For My Mind Is Blown?

You know when a brand name becomes the generic name for something?  It's like how "Kleenex" has come to mean "facial tissue."  I'd always wondered what you call that.  It turns out that it's called a Generonym.

But here's the weird thing about it.  It may be called a generonym in academic circles, but I've noticed that whenever people have to describe this concept, they always resort to Kleenex, just like I did above.  So "generonym" is like "facial tissue" in that it's a technical name that normal people ignore in favour of a brand name.  For instance, if I had to describe how "Google" has become the generic word for searching on the internet, I could say that Google has been "Kleenexed."  So Kleenex has not only been "Kleenexed" as the word for facial tissue, it has been Kleenexed as the word for a brand name in general use.

16 By 9 Circles Of Hell

Let me tell you about my levels of frustration watching regular-def TV on an HDTV.  The problem is not the definition, but the aspect ratio.  That's the technical term for the fact that HDTVs (and movie screens) are wider relative to their height than conventional TVs.  Here are the problems:


Level 1: they show a wide-angle movie on regular-def TVs, so they have to leave the top and bottom of the screen black.  This is kind of annoying - and confuses some people - but what can they do.  Later they start showing regular TV shows in the wide format, which is kind of pretentious since most people didn't have HDTVs yet.

Level 2: you buy a wide-screen TV, but decline to pay $10 a month extra for the HD digital converter box, so you're watching regular-shaped TV using only the middle of your screen, with the edges black.

Level 3: you watch one of the shows mentioned in level 1, where they have to fit a wide-format show into a regular broadcast.  So it's got black across the top and bottom of the screen, and the sides of the screen.  You're watching something the right shape but wrong size for the screen.

Level 4: Only once have I seen this actually happen: the network had apparently taken a wide-screen ad, made a small-screen recording of it with the black top and bottom of the screen, then broadcast that as part of a wide-screen broadcast (with blacked-out sides) but when that was shown on the regular-def broadast they had to black-out the more of the top and bottom, and I was watching on a wide TV with the sides blacked out.  So with double blacked-out edges, the picture took up about the middle ninth of the screen.  That's like watching Hollywood Squares and only being able to see Paul Lynde.


So I'm looking forward to the day when this is all over and all we have is wide-angle HD.  And by then I'll have moved on to complaining that my 3-D TV keeps showing 2-D programs an inch from my nose.

Tech History (May) Repeat Itself

Facebook made a big announcement today about their new phone initiative.  They had long been rumoured to be working on a phone, and been denying they were working on one for just as long.  So some people thought it would just be a new app.  But they recently modified their Android app to remove all the suck.

It turned out both sides were sort-of right.  They announced a new "home screen" for Android, which will let people see their Facebook stuff without going into their Facebook app.  It will come standard on some new phones.  The reports I've read haven't been clear but I'm assuming you can also download it too.  But the fact that they seem to be stressing the fact that it comes on new phones makes it seem that they'd like to be a major part of your phone purchase decision.

Will it be successful?  My first thought is, no.  The whole thing makes me think of Microsoft Bob.  For you young'uns out there, Bob was a new, easier computer interface for people who found even the then-new Windows desktop too confusing.  Instead of the metaphor of a desktop with folders and files and a garbage can, it used the metaphor of a person walking around a house.  It sounds foolish to admit this now, but at the time I assumed Bob would become a standard part of computing, much the same way we became stuck with Windows whether we liked it or not.

Of course, it didn't happen that way.  Bob was soundly rejected, and came to be the tech industry's equivalent of the Edsel.  And that contributed to the widely-held notion that Microsoft can't create any new product on their own, and need someone else - usually Apple - to create the prototype.

Anyway, that's why I'm a little afraid that the Facebook homepage or whatever it's called might be something we're all stuck with, but also why I'm reassured that we won't be.  Having said that though, there are a couple of reasons why it might yet work.

In a Wired writeup on it, they emphasize that the Facebook phone will be seen as the easy way to use the Internet, since that is essentially what Facebook itself is: a simpler, easier version of the Internet.  That in itself is not a very convincing argument.  You know who else had that "Internet, but easier" strategy?  AOL.  And it worked for them for a while, until people got comfortable with computers and the Internet and found other options.  What's more, Facebook users - while not as young and hip as stereotyped - are not exactly the elderly tech-newcomers that were AOL's bread-and-butter.

But Wired's "Facebook makes things easy" article dovetails nicely with another article of theirs that illustrates the shocking disparity between Android and iPhone users.  It turns out that although there are twice as many Android users, iPhone users do double the web surfing.  That seems to play into the perception that iPhone users are looking for a device that does lots of things, while Android users just buy a phone and don't really know or care what it does.

In that case an Android phone that does things easily and without that fuss of downloading apps and figuring out how they work, could be successful.  Add to that the phone makers need for differentiation:  they love Android because it's cheap but popular, but they hate the fact that if you make Android phones, you're competing with all the other makers of Android phones making the same product.  They wish they could mark up the price for a well known brand the way Apple can, but really they're making the equivalent of a no-name phone.  That's why Android phone and tablets have the so-called "crapware": apps and widgets supplied by the manufacturer to try to make their Android phone seem different from their competitor's Android phone.  The Facebook homepage would be a great way to make your product to stand out, so you know manufacturers are going to give it the promotion it needs to survive.

On Canvas, From Los Angeles

I was just looking through the artwork from a Saturday Night Live art show in L.A.  As with anything that retrospectives the entire SNL history, I'm ready to get angry if they've over-emphasized something I hate (I just know there's going to be too much Mary Catherine Gallagher and not enough Church Lady.)  But in this case, I wasn't left angry, just surprised.  What did I learn?

• There's way less mythologising of the original cast than I expected.  (How could you not do a Samurai Tailor poster?)
• People really loved "Toonces the Driving Cat" and Matt "van down by the river" Foley
• And that one-off sketch where Chris Farley tries out for the Chippendales against Patrick Swayze made a big impact.  
• Stefon is the most popular current character, which is fitting because an art gallery that would have an SNL art show is just the sort of place he'd like.
• Christopher Walken is more popular than most of the cast members.
• Kind of off topic, but where was Father Guido Sarducci during the Papal change?

What Would Caesar Do?

When we think of countries declining, we might think of Britain and its end of empire.  Or we might look at the USA and its seeming ineffectuality.  Personally, I've always thought the exemplar of decline would be Mongolia.  They used to control all of Asia, now they have trouble putting a soccer team on the field.

But we have a new contender: Italy.  They've had a pretty bad century: Recently I've been following the WWII in Real Time twitter account (which is recounting the entire war, as it happens, 72 year later) and we're at the point where Italy is trying to hang on to Greece and the Balkans, and getting pushed back by Greek militias.  So in that battle of the has-beens, Greece is the easy winner.

What else has Italy done to embarrass themselves?  The legal system isn't helping - first they charge scientists with not warning of an earthquake on spite of that not actually being possible.  Now recharging Amanda Knox with murder, lets everyone on earth know they have no double jeopardy protection.

And then there's politics.  Electing Berlusconi looked bad, nearly re-electing him after all his indiscretions looks pathetic.  They also gave a quarter of their votes to a comedian.  Okay, I can respect that; but he turns out to just offer simplistic populist ideas not unlike the unrealistic policies of every opportunistic far left/right parties in Europe right now.  It would be like the Americans vote for a comedian and they pass up Jon Stewart for Jay Leno.

But the final blow is that the leftist party has come out and said that only a crazy person would want to govern Italy right now.  Normally I'd congratulate someone on their candour for saying that.  But as a party leader, he's essentially labelling himself as crazy.  It often seems like politicians are trying to out-crazy each other, but this is the first time I've seen it happen so openly.