I know I had all sorts of stuff I really wanted to talk about, but most of it has left my consciousness. Let's see what I can do anyway.
Olympics
I'm willing to believe that the 3rd graders on China's gymnastics team are old enough to compete, as long as China gives us back our nuclear secrets. The nucular secrets they can keep.
My favorite part of watching Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh win the gold medal was seeing them on the podium while the national anthem was played. I mentioned earlier that I liked seeing the women's eight all sing the national anthem. M-T and Walsh didn't sing the whole thing, but they each sang parts of it. I think they were overtaken a little by the amount of emotion you could see coursing through them at the time. It would be insufficient to say they looked happy. I'd use the word "joyful" or "euphoric" instead. I think they embody what I loved so much about the teams of Hamm, Foudy, Fawcett, Chastain, etc. Namely, the obvious love that they played with, both for the game and for each other. They are very worthy champions, great examples for America to show off to the rest of the world, and I wish both of them well in their plans to start having kids with their husbands.
As for women's soccer, the US team won an exciting gold medal match against Brazil thanks to a great strike from Carli Lloyd in overtime. There is no sudden-death in soccer overtime. They play two 15-minute extra periods, regardless of who scores first or how many goals are scored. Lloyd scored in the 6th minute of extra time, meaning the US had to hold out against 24 more minutes of desperate Brazilian attacking.
Brazil has Marta, generally considered to be the best women's player in the world. I'm rather partial to Wambach, but Marta is terrific and very, very dangerous. She carved up the US defense several times, but was stoned either by late defensive play or in one case, a great save by Hope Solo. Solo has had a tough time personally since she spouted off about Greg Ryan's decision to bench her against Brazil in the 2007 World Cup.
Solo was banned by her teammates from playing in the consolation game. She was banned by her teammates from eating with the team. She was banned by her teammates from flying back to the United States with the team. That's bringing down the heavy hammer. She lost a few friends along the way.
I wrote that this sort of thing was pretty unprecedented for this team, and that I didn't want the women's game to become more like the men's game, with players criticizing each other and calling each other out. But part of me feels for her, and sort of likes the fact that she was so open and honest about what she thought. If she had waited a month and then sat down in an interview with some soccer mag, people would have come down on her and said, "Why didn't you say anything a month ago?" and accused her of being whiny. She's a good player, and she hasn't lived the easiest life in the world, so I'm glad to see her take home the gold.
So who "won" the medal count? The United States had the most overall medals, but China finished with 51 golds to 36 for the US. How did they do it? See here. They dominated in Gymnastics and Diving, kept their top status in table tennis, broke the strangleholds of Korea and Indonesia in Archery and Badminton, respectively, and put a lot of effort into some relatively lightly-contested events like Trampoline and Sailing. The biggest surprise to me was the EIGHT golds in weightlifting. I thought the Eastern Europeans had that stuff down pat.
Weather
Gustav is on his way to Louisiana, expected to make landfall with the eye to the west of New Orleans. Meteorology review:
Hurricanes are like big energy machines. They draw energy from warm water areas. The longer they stay over water, the stronger they get. They weaken when they get over land. They rotate counter-clockwise, meaning that the Eastern part of the storm is stronger and more damaging than the Western part. I think of it as a big right hand coming in to land a punch. If Gustav were to the West of New Orleans, the wind and rain would be less severe, since the stronger part would have already come over a bit of land before coming around to reach the city. Of course, that would also be bad news for whoever is sitting a few hours east of N.O.
I grew up in a state that had a general feeling--in spite of having been hit with devastating storms before--of "Hurricanes? Whatever. I'm not leaving my house, thank you very much." Now I'm seeing reports that 90-95% of the Louisiana coast has been evacuated. Some estimates have only 10,000 people staying behind in New Orleans. That's what seeing your city under ten feet of water for days on end will do for you. We'll probably get a lot of rain in Natchitoches, and I expect there will be some wind damage and a lot of picking up limbs in the yard afterwards. Gah.
Football
College football season started this weekend, and I was very happy to watch LSU beat Appalachian State yesterday. Game time was 10am due to evacuation concerns, so I guess tailgating started at 8pm Friday night. I didn't like the sluggish third quarter, but the lines were great, the tackling was good, and the game was never really in doubt. Not a bad way to start the season, and hopefully they'll get better each week leading up to the Auburn game in Week 4.
Sarah Palin
I have seen three pretty funny reactions related to John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his VP running mate.
1) Someone writing in to Jack Cafferty saying "If I had known that being an inexperience hockey mom was qualification enough to be vice president, I'd have told my wife to apply for the job."
2) Cafferty apologizing for being late to a segment with Wolf Blitzer to talk about Palin. "Sorry I'm late. I was under heavy sniper fire on the 4th floor." (using a "misremembered" Hillary story for an excuse. I like it) This was followed by Wolf talking to Glenn Beck, who also apologized for being late. "I'm also sorry I was late. I was on the 4th floor adjusting my scope." Now that's funny.
3) This video from the Red State Update guys. I'd never really watched any of their stuff, but this made me giggle.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
Olympics
I picked a pretty good time of year to have two solid weeks with no responsibility. I get to see pretty much all the Olympic events that are on TV if I so choose. I really do enjoy watching certain sports I don't get to see very often, such as badminton, archery, field hockey, and handball. Track and field is on sporadically throughout the year, but I don't pay as much attention then as I do during the Olympics. I really like the Olympics. The idea of somebody from Central African Republic taking on somebody from American Samoa (no idea if this actually happens) makes me smile. Thoughts on some of the action so far:
I always wonder how some countries end up having national uniforms that don't match the colors of their flag. Italy wears blue uniforms, despite the flag being green, white and red. The Italian national soccer team is called the Azzurri (from Azzurro Savoia), which translates roughly as "the Blues". Wikipedia (arbiter of truth in today's world) calls it "the colour traditionally linked to the dynasty which unified Italy in 1861". (the French national team is also called "les Bleus")
The Australian Flag is red, white and blue, but their national uniforms are green and gold, making them look like the Packers. (away soccer jerseys are blue)
I was watching some men's rowing yesterday and saw the 4-man team from Denmark win a gold medal. I think that any Scandinavian team winning rowing gold should immediately rampage through the surrounding countryside, pillaging and burning everything in their paths. Reflecting one's Viking heritage is very important.
I also saw the U.S. women's eight win gold, and let's just say they were happy. Happy when it ended, happy in the interview, and happy during the national anthem. For some reason I was caught up a little watching and listening to several of the women actually singing the anthem. In most cases you just see their lips moving, if they sing at all. They could be using my sister's old trick of singing "cantaloupe, watermelon" when they don't know the words. But in this case I could hear them singing, and combined with the obvious joy on their faces, it made for quite a scene.
From what I know about rowing and the training that goes into it, I'd be thinking "Okay, I've got a medal. I never want to get into that ******* boat again."
I wrote in this post about my favorite overall team being the US Women's Soccer team. I got a chance to watch them this morning against Japan and was relatively pleased. They're playing without three starting players: Leslie Osborne, Cat Whitehill, and (sniff) Abby Wambach (sniff). They lost the opening game of group play to Norway 2-0. Since then they beat Japan and New Zealand to advance to the elimination rounds, beat Canada in overtime and beat Japan again today to reach the finals. This means the team has made the finals in every Olympics since women's soccer was added as a sport. For this to happen without three world-class players is very, very impressive.
Good luck against Brazil in the finals. They're going to need it.
Ato Boldon is doing color commentary for NBC's track and field coverage. I knew he was from Trinidad and Tobago, so I was looking forward to him speaking with a heavy Trinidad accent. I used to work in an office that had a lady from T&T, and I could listen to her talk all day, where I would understand about 2 of every 3 words. Sadly, Ato seems to have lost (or disguised) most of his accent by moving to Queens, NY when he was 14. Zut alors!
Finally, I'd like to direct your attention to this video, which is called "Beijing Welcomes You". It's very nice, very pretty, and very sweet. It's about friendship and camaraderie and how China opens its arms to the rest of the world for the Olympics. It's got Jackie Chan. I'll have it stuck in my head for a week. If they made one like it in America, we would rip it to shreds and make fun of if mercilessly.
Come to think of it, we didn't even wait for an English version, since someone already came up with a version called "Please Ignore the Communism". (Note: both videos appear to have spotty accessibility--I've seen "this video is no longer available" on both, but searching for them seems to work okay). My favorite lines:
"We will get to know each other/nd I am sure you will find love
becomes
"So have fun here and when you leave/please take these extra children"
and
"The evergreen tree grows in my yard/I will tell you my stories"
becomes
"When the Party tells you to dress like Elvis/You dress like ****ing Elvis"
My favorite parts of the parody:
I always wonder how some countries end up having national uniforms that don't match the colors of their flag. Italy wears blue uniforms, despite the flag being green, white and red. The Italian national soccer team is called the Azzurri (from Azzurro Savoia), which translates roughly as "the Blues". Wikipedia (arbiter of truth in today's world) calls it "the colour traditionally linked to the dynasty which unified Italy in 1861". (the French national team is also called "les Bleus")
The Australian Flag is red, white and blue, but their national uniforms are green and gold, making them look like the Packers. (away soccer jerseys are blue)
I was watching some men's rowing yesterday and saw the 4-man team from Denmark win a gold medal. I think that any Scandinavian team winning rowing gold should immediately rampage through the surrounding countryside, pillaging and burning everything in their paths. Reflecting one's Viking heritage is very important.
I also saw the U.S. women's eight win gold, and let's just say they were happy. Happy when it ended, happy in the interview, and happy during the national anthem. For some reason I was caught up a little watching and listening to several of the women actually singing the anthem. In most cases you just see their lips moving, if they sing at all. They could be using my sister's old trick of singing "cantaloupe, watermelon" when they don't know the words. But in this case I could hear them singing, and combined with the obvious joy on their faces, it made for quite a scene.
From what I know about rowing and the training that goes into it, I'd be thinking "Okay, I've got a medal. I never want to get into that ******* boat again."
I wrote in this post about my favorite overall team being the US Women's Soccer team. I got a chance to watch them this morning against Japan and was relatively pleased. They're playing without three starting players: Leslie Osborne, Cat Whitehill, and (sniff) Abby Wambach (sniff). They lost the opening game of group play to Norway 2-0. Since then they beat Japan and New Zealand to advance to the elimination rounds, beat Canada in overtime and beat Japan again today to reach the finals. This means the team has made the finals in every Olympics since women's soccer was added as a sport. For this to happen without three world-class players is very, very impressive.
Good luck against Brazil in the finals. They're going to need it.
Ato Boldon is doing color commentary for NBC's track and field coverage. I knew he was from Trinidad and Tobago, so I was looking forward to him speaking with a heavy Trinidad accent. I used to work in an office that had a lady from T&T, and I could listen to her talk all day, where I would understand about 2 of every 3 words. Sadly, Ato seems to have lost (or disguised) most of his accent by moving to Queens, NY when he was 14. Zut alors!
Finally, I'd like to direct your attention to this video, which is called "Beijing Welcomes You". It's very nice, very pretty, and very sweet. It's about friendship and camaraderie and how China opens its arms to the rest of the world for the Olympics. It's got Jackie Chan. I'll have it stuck in my head for a week. If they made one like it in America, we would rip it to shreds and make fun of if mercilessly.
Come to think of it, we didn't even wait for an English version, since someone already came up with a version called "Please Ignore the Communism". (Note: both videos appear to have spotty accessibility--I've seen "this video is no longer available" on both, but searching for them seems to work okay). My favorite lines:
"We will get to know each other/nd I am sure you will find love
becomes
"So have fun here and when you leave/please take these extra children"
and
"The evergreen tree grows in my yard/I will tell you my stories"
becomes
"When the Party tells you to dress like Elvis/You dress like ****ing Elvis"
My favorite parts of the parody:
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Weekend in New Orleans
I spent the weekend in New Orleans with my parents. Dinner at Galatoire's Friday night (duck crepe, turtle soup, poisson meuniere amandine, coffee chocolate layered over chocolate mousse covered with whipped cream), Insectorium, Riverwalk, WWII Museum and Vincent's Saturday night. Pretty nice.
Saturday morning we were wandering outside the French Quarter and saw three or four guys wearing red dresses. This does not cause one to look twice in New Orleans, especially in the area of the Quarter. You're almost guaranteed to see stranger things than that.
But it didn't end there. Apparently there was a breast cancer run being put on by the New Orleans Hash House Harriers. There were THOUSANDS of people running around in red dresses. Every participant, male and female, was in a red dress of some variety. Even in New Orleans, that's enough to get some attention. The Hash members refer to themselves as "A Drinking Club With a Running Problem".
In closing, if you get a chance to stay at the Ritz Carlton outside the Quarter, take it.
And run with it.
Red dress optional.
Saturday morning we were wandering outside the French Quarter and saw three or four guys wearing red dresses. This does not cause one to look twice in New Orleans, especially in the area of the Quarter. You're almost guaranteed to see stranger things than that.
But it didn't end there. Apparently there was a breast cancer run being put on by the New Orleans Hash House Harriers. There were THOUSANDS of people running around in red dresses. Every participant, male and female, was in a red dress of some variety. Even in New Orleans, that's enough to get some attention. The Hash members refer to themselves as "A Drinking Club With a Running Problem".
In closing, if you get a chance to stay at the Ritz Carlton outside the Quarter, take it.
And run with it.
Red dress optional.
Three Really, REALLY Different Movies
I've seen three movies in the theater over the last month or so, each of which is much different than the others and was seen under different circumstances. So here we go:
Wall-e.
I saw this on a Monday afternoon at Gallery Place in Chinatown while I was wandering around DC taking pictures of things I didn't have on digital camera yet. It's well done and kind of funny, and I could see some people maybe getting a catch in their throat watching the parts meant to be emotional. But overall I just didn't see the big point of the movie. If it was just to show off what Pixar can do, then good job. But Pixar's reputation is already established, so it wasn't really necessary to prove anything. Was it to tell me that pollution is bad and that we should take better care of the planet? I already knew that, and seeing Wall-e didn't pound it home.
I also think that Wall-e is for really, really obese people what 300 was for Persians, just not in the really mean way.
Best thing is getting to experience the work of Ben Burtt, who did so many sounds and voices for the Star Wars movies.
The Dark Knight.
I saw this one at Tyson's Corner with my friends Kathy and Adam on a Saturday morning. It is currently on its way to smashing the box office into tiny bits (in thy mercy). You can make the argument that it's too long, but it's not like the extra 15-20 (or 35-40) minutes were that bad.
A lot of attention was paid to Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, and I'd say it was richly deserved. I'm sure somebody out there has talked about him exploring the dark recesses of his soul to come up with this version of the bad guy, which was so much different than Jack Nicholson's. I'd resist comparing them simply because each guy was asked to do such different things with the character.
While watching it I was thinking about some of the "ideas" of Batman. I thought about Gordon, and how Commissioner Gordon is one of the reliable characters. I really like what Gary Oldman has done with him in the last two movies. He's played some really crazy/creepy/whacked out characters (none more so than Beethoven, who seemed even stranger than Dracula), so it's a little odd to see him as someone relatively normal. By the way, Immortal Beloved came out in 1994, the same year as Leon, called The Professional in the US. Good movie.
I thought about one of the things that people forget about Batman: Batman doesn't kill, and he doesn't use guns. It's been that way for almost 70 years. The Joker references this once or twice, but I don't know if people understood what he was getting at. Batman could have run over the Joker or let him fall to his death or blown him to smithereens, but he doesn't. Among other things I think it helps keep the plot interesting.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Ugh.
I saw this on a Wednesday afternoon at the Parkway Cinema in Natchitoches. The "ugh" is not for the venue, though it's certainly not comparable to the other two. It's not even for the loud commenter sitting in the row behind me or the walrus making and taking phone calls in the row in front of me. The "ugh" is for the movie expecting me to suspend disbelief enough to allow for Brendan Fraser holding his own against Jet Li in a fight. It's not a good enough movie for that to happen. I wish Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh would stop making movies for American audiences. Their straight Chinese stuff is so much better.
On the other hand, I did get to see Maria Bello. I love me some Maria Bello, even if her British accent was just atrocious. I see from her IMDB bio that there's now a director's cut of Payback, a movie I really, really enjoy watching. I'll have to look into that.
Wall-e.
I saw this on a Monday afternoon at Gallery Place in Chinatown while I was wandering around DC taking pictures of things I didn't have on digital camera yet. It's well done and kind of funny, and I could see some people maybe getting a catch in their throat watching the parts meant to be emotional. But overall I just didn't see the big point of the movie. If it was just to show off what Pixar can do, then good job. But Pixar's reputation is already established, so it wasn't really necessary to prove anything. Was it to tell me that pollution is bad and that we should take better care of the planet? I already knew that, and seeing Wall-e didn't pound it home.
I also think that Wall-e is for really, really obese people what 300 was for Persians, just not in the really mean way.
Best thing is getting to experience the work of Ben Burtt, who did so many sounds and voices for the Star Wars movies.
The Dark Knight.
I saw this one at Tyson's Corner with my friends Kathy and Adam on a Saturday morning. It is currently on its way to smashing the box office into tiny bits (in thy mercy). You can make the argument that it's too long, but it's not like the extra 15-20 (or 35-40) minutes were that bad.
A lot of attention was paid to Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, and I'd say it was richly deserved. I'm sure somebody out there has talked about him exploring the dark recesses of his soul to come up with this version of the bad guy, which was so much different than Jack Nicholson's. I'd resist comparing them simply because each guy was asked to do such different things with the character.
While watching it I was thinking about some of the "ideas" of Batman. I thought about Gordon, and how Commissioner Gordon is one of the reliable characters. I really like what Gary Oldman has done with him in the last two movies. He's played some really crazy/creepy/whacked out characters (none more so than Beethoven, who seemed even stranger than Dracula), so it's a little odd to see him as someone relatively normal. By the way, Immortal Beloved came out in 1994, the same year as Leon, called The Professional in the US. Good movie.
I thought about one of the things that people forget about Batman: Batman doesn't kill, and he doesn't use guns. It's been that way for almost 70 years. The Joker references this once or twice, but I don't know if people understood what he was getting at. Batman could have run over the Joker or let him fall to his death or blown him to smithereens, but he doesn't. Among other things I think it helps keep the plot interesting.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Ugh.
I saw this on a Wednesday afternoon at the Parkway Cinema in Natchitoches. The "ugh" is not for the venue, though it's certainly not comparable to the other two. It's not even for the loud commenter sitting in the row behind me or the walrus making and taking phone calls in the row in front of me. The "ugh" is for the movie expecting me to suspend disbelief enough to allow for Brendan Fraser holding his own against Jet Li in a fight. It's not a good enough movie for that to happen. I wish Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh would stop making movies for American audiences. Their straight Chinese stuff is so much better.
On the other hand, I did get to see Maria Bello. I love me some Maria Bello, even if her British accent was just atrocious. I see from her IMDB bio that there's now a director's cut of Payback, a movie I really, really enjoy watching. I'll have to look into that.
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