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Saturday, May 25, 2002
A couple of thoughts over hot, fresh Krispy Kremes (sometimes it's hard to resist stopping by the 24-hour Krispy Kreme between the office and home) ...
For some reason I heard Cracker's "Low" on the all-purpose rock station and the alt-rock station here within seconds of each other. I heard "Low" on the first station then changed channels when it ended. I turned on the second station and thought I had made a mistake. Nope. Very strange, considering it was about 3 a.m. and it involved a relatively minor hit from 1993 that is still getting lots of radio play here. (Granted, I like the song, and it was something I heard a lot of in college, but still ...)
For something completely different, I wonder if I'm getting very complacent in being single. While I thought I was like Hugh Grant's character in "About a Boy," one major thing is different -- I'm not cut out for dating lots of women for short periods of time. Instead, I think I'm good at building up strong friendships/relationships with women -- unfortunately none really going anywhere.
That usually doesn't stop me from hoping for/working on something more substantial -- as is the case with a couple of close girl friends (note the space) in my life. However, for some reason I'm feeling very detached to both of them right now -- surprisingly right after doing mix CDs for both of them. I still like them a lot, but unlike before where I was afraid to show my interest, I find myself gravitating away from them and not towards anyone -- just some free-floating away into an emptiness. Maybe it's just another aspect of my fear of rejection manifesting itself in a harsher way. I don't know, but I am trying my best to get everything rekindled.
posted at 12:48 PM
Thursday, May 23, 2002
OK, I'm a pretty big homer for my alma mater, but even the most jaded of college students will probably find this rant a little bit much. Sure, many people like to complain about what school they go to -- the administration, the bureaucracy, etc. As long as you got a quality education (and hopefully a good job) out of your time, that should suffice and thus make the huge investment into the school worth it. (That's any school, not just Northwestern).
I've always felt complaining about a bad social life on campus is silly. I didn't have much of one, but that's the way I was. I developed my own circle of friends; they just happened not to be the partying type. Your social happiness is what you make of it. There were plenty of parties on campus, you just had to find it. Of course, she also said she lived her freshman year at the Foster-Walker Complex (all singles, very much apart from everyone) -- you just had to try much harder.
What gets me here is that she said she never really wanted to go to NU. She wanted to go to Stanford instead. Fine. Then why did you spend four years here? If you were that miserable off the bat, get out as soon as you could. No one would've begrudged you. Sometimes, people aren't the right fit for a school, and find some place else to go where they're comfortable. Stop stewing and do something about it. I guess she is just preparing herself for the real world where whining is a prerequisite to holding many jobs.
Finally, she bemoans the lack of minorities and those on campus aren't "down with the brown." I guess this is one thing that bothered me a lot hearing about race relations and minorities while I was there. I kept a very mixed company at school, and yes it looked weird when we all were hanging out together. But maybe that's because I was more comfortable around all sorts of people as opposed to just being around Asians (in my case).
Then again, I was always a bit more comfortable being around primarily white students mainly because I think I fit in better, oddly enough. But that's probably because I didn't speak Tagalog -- I was raised to speak English. So while other Filipino people were speaking Tagalog, I had no idea what was going on. But I did know what the white kids were saying and thus felt more at ease. I think I took that all through school. If I happened to be friends with Asians, great. If not, no big deal. I didn't gravitate one way or another. And while I am part of the Asian American Journalists Association, I look at that as a professional organization -- I'm not basing my social life on it. There's definitely nothing wrong about being proud of your heritage (and I really am), but some people just reflect it different than other people.
posted at 11:05 PM
Fun with Google
You can discover some interesting things about your friends, relatives and other acquaintances through the search engines. I've definitely stumbled across some long-lost friends that way. (And vice versa) It gets even weirder looking through the archived USENET posts on Google. I figured a recent lookup of myself would yield a bunch of posts to alt.college.college-bowl and some trivia stuff. Then all of a sudden pop up some lyrics quizzes I ran eight years ago during my freshman year in college, not to mention some other goofy posts. Interesting to say the least, as was my .sig file, which is even more pretentious than it is today. I'd like to think I've matured a tad in my writings that somehow appear online.
posted at 12:40 AM
Wednesday, May 22, 2002
Let's get ready to rumble
Yes, I subjected myself to Celebrity Boxing. It wasn't as fun as last time, but at least they kept William Perry's torso in check with a tank top (as opposed to the weigh-in). Unfortunately, more people probably saw that instead of the Arturo Gatti-Mickey Ward fight over the weekend. As the announcers said, it was a throwback to fights of the '50s, when they actually punched each other. Gatti would absolutely whale on "Irish" Mickey (reminds me a lot of the underrated The Great White Hype) for about a minute, then Ward would whale on Gatti and so forth. Lots of blood, lots of punching, lots of actual action. Don King has helped to turn boxing into a farce, but the fighters themselves have helped to do so as well. I think there were more punches thrown in the Darva Conger-Olga Korbut fight than in some 12-round title fights.
posted at 11:50 PM
Not that there's anything wrong with it
While many of baseball brethren were agog about the long-awaited and successful debut of Mark Prior with the Cubs (and I got him on one of my fantasy rosters in time), too many others were jumping on the Mike Piazza "I'm not gay" story. The Brandon Lemon article last year in Out caused a stir, and lots of whispering and throwing around of names, but this got a bit ridiculous when Page Six can dictate the back page. Piazza pretty much did a pre-emptive strike with his comments, but it probably won't get much better until this weekend when the Mets return home and the fans can react one way or another.
I wouldn't have a problem with an openly gay baseball player. It would stop some of the snickering behind backs guessing if he's in or out. Unfortunately, most people aren't that open, and there'll be too much of a stigma attached by too many fans -- even today. However, until someone actually outs himself, let's not start guessing.
posted at 11:26 PM
It can't all be happy endings
Plenty of ground needed to be covered in the finale of 24, and I think they did do a decent job of wrapping up a couple of major plot points. The Palmers split up, natch. And the Drazens bit the bullet as Jack Bauer turned into a character from a John Woo film. The Nina thing was done reasonably well, and I think they left some things up in the air with the intention of using her character in some way next season. (They supposedly shot three endings. I imagine if the show didn't get picked up, Nina might've gotten killed as well.)
The death of Teri was a big surprise, but it also proved that not everything can turn out for the best for Jack. If anything, it will now get the show more focused on Jack next season. While the family angle was done reasonably well for a while, some of the twists and turns were a bit much with them -- especially Teri's brief amnesia (a prime jumping the shark candidate. It got silly after a while when the Bauer women got thrown into crazier and crazier situations.
I am happy to see it back next year, especially since it will be in that "real-time" format. It really does work as a very long-form movie, with characters allowed to flesh themselves out over the course of what is, for all intents and purposes, one plotline.
posted at 11:01 PM
May the poop be with you
OK, I found a link to Triumph's adventures on line for Attack of the Clones. Have fun with it.
posted at 11:19 AM
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
The Final Countdown
I'm looking forward to seeing the season finale/final hour of "24" tonight, especially how they'll deal with the mole Nina/Yelena. The producers of the show have outlined how Nina could be the mole, as seen in this article, which just happened to be written by a former editor-in-chief of The Daily Northwestern, and the guy who helped us launch the paper's site during the infancy of the Web.
posted at 4:48 PM
Random observation
The Dillard's department store ad in today's AJC was hawking swimsuits. There were picture of Misses, Juniors and "The Dillard's Woman." The first two were shots of pretty, if generic, women. The last one was of a larger-figured woman. What is anyone supposed to make of that? And if Peter Warrick and Laveranues Coles knew that was "The Dillard's woman," would they have gone on their infamous shopping spree?
posted at 4:30 PM
Sure, many others have beaten the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" thing to death, but the New York Times has jumped on this topic as well. One thing that a lot of critics and other media reporters seem to miss when discussing the demise of WWTBAM is the elimination of the phone-in game to determine contestants. Sure, celebrity editions wore thin really quickly, but that happened after contestants were picked more for personality/looks/etc. rather than actual playing ability. The show had gotten away from what made it click -- people you believed could win lots of money because they supposedly knew a lot.
Many of my quizbowl friends and associates have been contestants on the show, and needless to say, many of these folks wouldn't have been on the show through the more recent system. A lot of the thrill of the show was the fact that, "Hey, I can make this show!" as long as you could play the phone game well. Going through a contestant search is far more grueling time-wise, and god forbid you don't live within a couple of hours from a city with a search. The net effect was less money being given away. What a surprise.
Unfortunately, it looks like Regis won't be back on newer versions of the show. So minus Regis, minus the phone-in game and you've eliminated two huge reasons why people won't be going back.
posted at 4:12 PM
Well I got around to seeing "About a Boy" today, which happened to be playing at the artsy theater down the street from me (a good 15-minute walk from my place; figured I didn't need to drive everywhere in this city). It was a very funny film and touching at times, as Hugh Grant learns how to grow up thanks to a very dorky 12-year-old boy.
For some reason, I could sorta see myself in Hugh Grant's role of Will (although I'm actually working and not just living off the royalties from a one-hit wonder). He was subscribing to the idea that he is an island; the star of his own TV show (which is not an ensemble drama). He was his own person and really had little to do with other people's lives, as it was all about him. That's because he knew inside he had nothing to offer the world, until he came across this kid who actually showed him he could offer something to someone (and in the case of the often pathetic Marcus, it was a big help). I don't think I'm as shallow as Will, but every so often I'll get into that idea that I need a person or two in the inner circle around me -- so it's not always just about me.
The overall story was better compared to "High Fidelity" (I haven't seen "Fever Pitch" -- Nick Hornby's other novel turned into a film), at least once the relationship between Will and Marcus started developing. But HF had better secondary characters with Dick and Barry, the other guys in the record store. On the other hand, the main female characters in AB didn't weigh down the film like Iben Hjejle did as Laura as John Cusack's girlfriend in HF. But enough with the nitpicking, it's well-written and decently acted film that's somewhat lightweight but still fun to watch.
posted at 12:29 AM
Monday, May 20, 2002
My Top Five -- Hits of the '80s
Nothing witty or funny -- yet. Just some lists. Eventually it will become something interesting or useful. To start with, I'll go with something I know very well -- '80s music.
Here's my list in not much of an order:
1. Every Breath You Take: The Police (Puffy could've picked any other song and I wouldn't have cared.)
2. Owner of a Lonely Heart: Yes
3. One Thing Leads to Another: The Fixx
4. Hold Me Now: Thompson Twins
5. Overkill: Men at Work (the fifth spot is always up for grabs -- I'll go with this since it's one of the more underrated songs from my favorite '80s group. The 1997 cover by Lazlo Bane featuring Colin Hay got me more interested in the song again.)
posted at 12:53 AM
It's not just TV. It's your payroll
With a baseball strike looming, etc., etc., one thing that usually seems lost in the whole shuffle about revenues, player salaries, etc., is the effect of local TV contracts. I can sorta see this just from what games get fed into our office on a nightly basis. There's always some big hubbub about why we never get certain games. In some cases, it's because of some bad satellite/DSS arrangements here. But in other cases, I've realized some of the "poorer" teams just don't have good TV contracts and thus when the two of them are playing, it's a crapshoot if we'll get the game.
The Montreal Expos are obviously a prime example since they barely got any local TV or radio deals for the past few years. But I've noticed teams like the Reds, A's, Brewers, Pirates, Royals and Twins not appearing as often on local TV as they should be (and thus we're not getting their feeds here). I don't have hard numbers in front of me, but you've got to wonder if even 50-60 percent of their games are televised at all (whether it be on a local broadcast station or a cable affiliate, likely a Fox Sports one). I'm sure they are, since they'll probably appear on the satellite packages (bad geography in my complex prevents me from getting a dish), but it seems like it's few and far between.
Plus, it doesn't help that their deals are dwarfed by the juggernaut of the Yankees and their YES Network (after finishing up a ridiculously lucrative deal with MSG that set the precedent for their huge spending today). Some of those teams can negotiate big deals and get lots of games shown while others scrape by and most of us seeing their games, but with other announcers calling them.
posted at 12:23 AM
Oh. My. Heck.
I may have been one of the few rooting for either Paschal or Neleh to win the latest Survivor, but I'm happy to see Vecepia win it. Yet again, another "fly under the radar" player takes the $1,000,000 prize. Everyone knows the Richard Hatch strategy from the original show, and it'll be hard for anyone to try that technique in the future.
Kathy was probably the best player of them all, but hey, I'm a bit shallow, and wanted to see the cute girl win it. This after local guy Paschal got the short end of the stick in the rock, rock, goose game to determine who got booted off. (Oh the many ways Mark Burnett can make this game that much more bizarre. It even sparked controversy on the local news as they milked the finale for all it's worth.)
The reunion special was actually a lot of fun for the first time because superfan Rosie O'Donnell hosted the show instead of Bryant Gumbel having to do his CBS duty. She could still get to the bottom of a bunch of things, but you could tell she actually cared about and liked these folks. Plus, you got to see the survivors looking a lot better instead of emaciated after weeks out in the wilderness. (Paschal and Neleh especially looked a ton better.)
Honestly, I'm surprised to see the show running as strong as it has. But then again, CBS has done a good job in not running it into the ground (see WWTBAM and Weakest Link), despite the constant Letterman and Early Show appearances. And as long as they pick enough attractive folks for the show, I'll watch. I will be a bit at odds again next fall since it will be up against Scrubs -- a show I've yet to watch much of but really want to. Hell, it stars a guy from my graduating class at Northwestern. (Granted I had no idea who he was until the show started.)
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