New Favorite

Jaundice James is one of my new favorite bloggers.

No Love for Vega

Once again, I am excluded from the Forbes Fictional Fifteen.

Steps will be taken. Oh, I promise you, steps will be taken.

Under Stalin, the Vodka was Safe

Watch out for the wood alchy:

Thirty-three people in a Siberian region have died after drinking homemade alcohol containing a poisonous substance, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported Wednesday.

The Magadan region's deputy governor, Yuri Muromtsev, said the victims, mostly men between the ages of 45 and 60, died between Oct. 28 and Nov. 6 after being poisoned by methanol, a common industrial substance used as a transportation fuel.

Interfax reported earlier this week that at least 30 people had been poisoned by tainted alcohol and that 25 of them had died, and said four women had been arrested on charges of illegal production and sale of alcohol products.

Thursday Deposed Monarch Blogging

King Michael of Romania seems like one hell of a stand up guy.

"If the people want me to come back, of course, I will come back," he said in 1990. But, he said, "Romanians have had enough suffering imposed on them to have a right to be consulted on their future."

The royal line, however, is under threat.

Michael has no son, and the 1923 Romanian constitution excluded women from the succession to the throne (as well as prohibiting succession rights to the throne from transferring through a woman). In an effort to ensure the continuity of the Hohenzollern claim, Michael issued and published in Bucharest what he called a new Family Law on 30 December 1997 (the 50th anniversary of his deposition), allowing females to succeed. Accordingly, he elevated and confirmed his eldest daughter Margaret as the heir apparent and Crown Princess of Romania. Since under the 1923 constitution the king did not have the power to make laws unilaterally, however, this statement would have been invalid even if Romania was still a monarchy.

Please, contact your local Romanian legislator today, and ask that the Family Law be confirmed. Romania cannot survive without a deposed monarch.

Thursday Deposed Monarch Blogging

Ertugrul Osman V, head of the Ottoman Dynasty, is 93 years old and lives in Manhattan.

Otto von Habsburg, rightful Emperor of Austria, is 82 and lives in Bavaria.

Georg Friedrich Ferdinand, Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia, is 29 and owns a pretty castle in Germany. He is also 146th in line to the English throne.

Mariya Vladimirovna Romanova, 52, claims the throne of Russia, yet splits her time between France and Spain. Her claim, apparently, is contested.

The French throne is claimed by Henri Philippe Pierre Marie d'Orléans, of the Orleans family, and Louis Alphonse, of the Bourbon family. The former is 72, and the latter 31.

The Qing Dynasty has no apparent claimants.

Random Facts About John Milius

Auteur of such films as Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn. Noted right wing nutcase.

His favourites films are Howard Hawks' Red River, Gillo Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers, Raoul Walsh's They Died With Their Boots On, John Ford's The Searchers and They Were Expendable, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurais, Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, John Huston's The Treasure of Sierra Madre, David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia and Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.

The Battle of Algiers is particularly interesting, although not really all that surprising when you think about it.

Wrote "U.S.S. Indianappolis" scene in Jaws (1975).

One of my favorite scenes in all of film.

Is a personal friend of the Coen brothers and was the inspiration for the character of Walter in the The Big Lebowski (1998).

Well known, but fascinating nonetheless.

Milius has recently become productive for the first time since 1997, writing several episodes of "Rome" and producing a film on the life of Romulus Augustus, last Emperor of the western half of the Empire.

Dolls

This, really, is the most disturbing thing that I've read all year.

"He asked me if I could make him a silicone dog, because he was a breeder, and he didn't want to hurt his dogs anymore, he said. He talked like right out of the movie 'Deliverance.'" McMullen's surfer-dude lilt plummets into a pungent drawl, "'Aw, I don't want to hurt ma dawgs, I like ma dawgs ... kin you make me one so ah kin still use it fer the sex?' And when I realized that he was legitimate, I was shocked. And I just politely said no, I'm sorry, gotta go, click." Another prospective customer sent nude pictures of his 60-year-old mother, wanting a custom-built replica. Then there was the surgical pathologist who wanted a vagina duplicated from a specimen he had in a jar.

Yarr

Yarr.

And arggh.

Trip

Meeting the ex was harder than I expected.

Red Sox fan. She became a Red Sox fan. A baseball fan. Difficult to communicate how troubling I find that. I guess I didn't try hard enough to get her interested in the game.

Of course, her new guy has Red Sox season tickets.

I would do terrible, terrible things for Red Sox season tickets.

Trip was valuable, good. Saw people, more civilized than I. Made me wistful.

Teach

Goddamn.

Whatever else, I'll always know that I can fucking TEACH. What a rush leaving a classroom when I know I've nailed it. . .

Mild

I find myself mildly depressed, and I have some doubt as to whether the intake of massive depressants will solve the problem.

It is a nice evening. It has rained, and an army of crickets chirps away. The temperature tonight will almost approach that of a civilized city, and tomorrow will be the coolest day since I arrived.

Nevertheless, I seem to lack purpose. I look forward to the event that will shake me out of the funk (and by this I mean more than the mild depression), but the event never seems to come, or, to be more clear, the event comes again and again, but the funk never ends. So, I look forward to the next event.

This is not as bad as it sounds, for the waiting is pleasant, and I am happy to do more of it. Sometimes, though, I wonder about the future.

Alcoholism

I've noticed that I'm drinking more. I had planned to become a raging alcoholic around age 37, dying with an estranged wife and kids who hate me by age 44. My career hasn't quite progressed as far as I'd like, so I'm having to delay those goals a bit. Unfortunately, I seem to be drinking a lot in my new locale (the wages of loneliness?). In order to stay on the path, I'll need to take care. . .

Players

Difficult to find players in new locale. Even the comic book guy at the local hobby store seems wary of nerds.

Troubling.

Intoxication

This is why we shouldn't blog while drunk.

Slow Going

Minimum of evil activity to report.

What's Wrong with Revenge of the Sith

I must humbly disagree with Matt regarding the merits of Revenge of the Sith.

Now, the good. First and most importantly: Lightsabers. They kick ass. The lightsaber combat in this film is by far the best in any of the films.

The best light saber duel in the Star Wars series comes in the worst film, The Phantom Menace. The battle between Obi Wan, Darth Maul, And Quai Gon remains unmatched. I was not impressed by the light saber combat in Revenge of the Sith. Lucas violated the central precept of on screen fencing; it's not real fencing. Fenching is not a terribly entertaining sport to watch, because it takes place at a speed no reasonable person can follow. I found that all of the light saber duels in Revenge of the Sith were too fast, and too hard to follow. This was a problem in itself, but created a second problem. Because the duels ended so quickly, none carried the psychological impact of Vader's battle with Luke in Empire, or Darth Maul defeat at the hands of Obi Wan in Phantom Menace. When Count Dooku died, I should have been emotionally invested, but I was not. I really ought to have been invested in the final duel, but again I felt unmoved (although it was kind of cool that Obi Wan defeats Anakin when the latter attempts the same move that Obi Wan pulled on Darth Maul in the first film).

This was not my only problem with the film.

While Hayden Christiansen displayed genuine menace as Darth Vader in the second half of the film, his performance was bookended by weak points. As others have noted, Anakin's conversion to the dark side took place with far too little preparation. This is perhaps not wholly correct; there is some preparation, but Lucas sabotages the narrative by having Anakin betray Darth Sidious to Mace Windu and the rest of the Jedi Council. I'm all for the occasional treacherous lieutenant, but this behavior made Anakin seem skittish, indecisive, and even a bit flaky. Sith are not indecisive, and the narrative would have been better served by a more linear move to the dark side.

The reconstruction of Darth Vader was visually interesting, but the conversation between Vader and Sidious undercuts its power. I demand a modicum of dignity from my newly minted evil servants, but Darth Sidious apparently requires none from his. Far better than the "Noooooo" nonsense regarding the death of his Senatorial tart would have been a reaction similar to the one Vader has at the end of Empire. Instead of raging and destroying Piett, Vader simply walks away following Luke's escape.

That's grace. That's dignity. That's the dark side of the force.

Since we're on the subject, let's discuss Vader's tart. While Matt correctly notes the problems created by the lack of a Han Solo figure, he doesn't mention the almost complete absence of a strong female lead. Leia was a princess, and she knew how to boss people around. Upon being rescued from the clutches of Grand Moff Tarkin (whose appearance in Revenge of the Sith is all too brief) she insults her benefactors and takes commmand. That's a woman. Padme, in comparison, is a doorstop. Indeed, such attachments on the part of one of my prime servants would arouse deep suspicion as to his discernment. Dies of grief? Not worthy of Vader's attention.

Speaking of Grand Moff Tarkin, it takes them 19 years to build the first Death Star, and only four to build the second? I would have the contractors associated with the first executed. . .

I was similarly troubled by the political situation described by the film. I cannot understand why the Senate so readily believed that the Jedi had moved against Palpatine and the Republic, nor can I grasp why it granted supreme lifetime executive power to Palpatine with so little fuss. From the first two films, we are to believe that the Senate was corrupt, obstructionist, and mind-bendingly slow in the face of a crisis. I can believe that Palpatine controlled some, and bought off others, but I cannot understand how he came to win virtually unanimous acclaim. Palpatine seemed not to have this level of control over the Senate 19 years later, when it apparently played some obstructionist role.

Then again, Jar Jar Binks didn't get any lines. That's something.

The Monkey Stumbles. . .

Going to have to work this one into regular conversation. . .

My Teeth

Going sixteen years between dental appointments is a bad thing.

I know that, now.

Saruman

Lance is a bit off. I'm there on his critique of Lucas, but quibble with his Lord of the Rings interpretation.

In Lord of the Rings there are plenty of other ways for characters to lose their ways and their souls than putting on the ring. Putting on the ring doesn't do the same thing to every character who wears it either. Hobbits, for instance, get cranky and pathologically anti-social. But Saruman doesn't care a fig about the Ring. He doesn't need it. He's already got the power he needs; what he wants, apparently, is worshippers. He talks of sharing power with Sauron, but he probably thinks he can get rid of Sauron when the time comes. Saruman wants to be a god on earth and he sets out to remake the world by destroying it. How neo-con of him.

Saruman did delve long into the history and making of the Ring, and long searched the Anduin for it. He dispatched his Uruk-Hai near and far to track it down. It was important to him, but not critical to his betrayal of the Lords of the West. Had Saruman found the Ring, he likely would have dispensed with Sauron and ruled Middle-Earth himself. Believing the Ring lost, but still recognizing the power of Sauron, he completed his betrayal. I rather think that Saruman has kinship with Denethor, but lacks the basic decency that Denethor has, and thus falls completely under Sauron's spell. Recognition of the power of Sauron arouses envy in Saruman and despair in Denethor.

Jackson's treatment of Denethor and his sons is the weakest element of his adaptation. In the extended version, Faramir comes off somewhat better, but Denethor remains little more than a pathetic villain. Jackson's treatment of Denethor is tied to his rich treatment of Theoden, who emerges as the most interesting character in the last two segments. Denethor and Theoden both lose a favored son, and both experience despair in the face of overwhelming power. Both make suicidal decisions at the end, although Theoden's is more productive. Jackson may have felt that humanizing Denethor would have simply resulted in Theoden redux, but I believe he could have drawn some powerful contrasts.

At the very least, he could have shown Denethor under the power of the Palantir, thus giving some cause for his deep despair.

Mickey Kaus Ought to be Beaten to Death

Do you think we could convince Kim Du Toit to give his award back?

Norma Desmond says, "I am big. It's the pictures that got smaller." OK. But if the pictures got smaller doesn't Desmond, you know, look even bigger on the smaller screen? She should be saying. "I am big. But the pictures got bigger still!" I'm all confused! ... 2:05 A.M.