The Michael Canfield Channel ...

Stuff I hate (part 2 of a series)

Awards.

A for instance: After Goodfellas, The Last Temptation of Christ, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, King of Comedy, and more, Scorcese gets a directing Oscar(TM) for a tedious and ridiculous self-parody "The Departed" with featured an embarrassing performance by Jackie "The Joker" Nicholson, denouement of bullets-to-the-head that is executed (excuse the pun) seemingly without the slightest awareness of its own absurdity.

So that two things I hate. Awards (because they are often for something else -- which will be the case if Chabon wins the Hugo this year) and "The Departed."

Page 1

Pogue's faq

Link: Pogue’s Posts - Technology - New York Times Blog.

Q: Are you a Macintosh fanboy?

A: Not exactly; what I really am is an elegance fanboy. I love products whose designers have obviously lain awake nights worrying about elegance, simplicity, and beauty. That group tends to include Palm, Sonos, TiVo, Research in Motion (of BlackBerry fame), Google usually, and, yes, often enough, Apple.

Believe it or not, even Microsoft seems to have been bit by the beauty bug, if the pre-release versions of Windows Vista are any indication.

A Scanner Darkly

   Haven't heard much about this film, which is not surprising, I guess, but finally I have seen the Phil Dick movie I've waited almost thirty years for: faithful to the original - not only in plot, but also in aesthetic. Finally someone had the guts to do phildickian sf the way Dick himself did. Linklater shows us no hovercraft, no leather trench coats, no cyberpunk chic, just the beat up cars, trashed yards, and lost souls of suburban California. Dick created landscapes that look like the future we have, unlike a cartoon like Bladerunner, which still looks like, well, an old movie. Keanu Reeves, for all his past portrayals of cyberpunk heroes, gets it exactly right here,  playing a classic Dick character - cop investigating himself while his identity unravels - as neither Cruise nor Ford had, or perhaps even bothered to seek the awareness to do. Probably better for their matinee-idol careers that they did not try.

Oblique Strategies

Many years ago, Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt created a series of I-Ching-like oracle cards for facilitating creativity called the Oblique Strategies, and they are online and they are fun.

Neologism

to scifichannel (v.) 1.The act of reassigning race, age, or gender of characters in a fictive work when adapting that work into a new medium - ostensibly for the purpose of "broadening appeal." 2. The act of casting actors of color in background roles, such as shaman, mentor, savior, or sidekick, etc., and to use those casting choices to proclaim a project's "diversity."

Sources:

1. A Whitewashed Earthsea - How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books. By Ursula K. Le Guin.

2. The Black Commentator - Magic Negro - Issue 49

X-Men III

Saw X-Men the other day and am scratching my head as to why it got such tepid reviews - at least considering that the first two were better reviewed. I enjoyed this, and cannot agree with the sentiment that it this installment relied too heavily on special effects at the expense of character. To the contrary, I thought the big action last act worked because of everything that had gone before. This wasn't a generic action climax, and sympathy was built for all three sides of the war.  Magneto's final fate (well temporarily final fate, anyway) carried additional resonance because of his specific behavior towards other mutants earlier in the film. I would have liked more Rogue but then I always want more Rogue. And I still stand by my belief that if X-Men has to be a movie franchise (instead of an HBO series as it should be) these movies capture the spirit of the Marvel Multiverse Sturm and Soap Opera just about as well as any movies can. Kelsey Grammer was pitch perfect as Beast, and Halle Berry actually had stuff to do in this one. The digital erasing of two character's wrinkles for the early flashback scenes was seriously creepy however.

John Patterson wishes Robert Aldrich still lived.

Mainstream maverick.

Are HBO shows best experienced on DVD?

One of the most pressing issues of out time, discussed by Sam Anderson.

Music for This Day

Sympathy for Roger Ebert

From rogerebert.com

I confess to a flagging interest in the struggle between the forces of Light and Darkness. It's like Super Sunday in a sport I do not follow, like tetherball. We're told the future of the world hangs in the balance, and then everything comes down to a handful of hung-over and desperate characters surrounded by dubious special effects.

Like Ebert, I'm pretty much Star-Wars-LOTR-Potter-ed out.

Thugs Get Lonely Too

You like monkeys, you like ponies - don't you?
Jonathan Coulton: Skullcrusher Mountain (lyrics and link to hear/buy song).

Guilty?

Via Tropism became aware of a "Guilty Pleasures" meme going around. I'm not sure I have any, but there are certainly things I like that people would make fun of me for liking (oh, if they only knew ...):

Culinary: Green bean casserole. Made of equal parts canned green beans, canned mushroom soup, and the crunchy onion things which feature the recipe on the side. I brought this to a Thanksgiving once to near unanimous praise. The sole dissenter found himself overly disturbed by this reminder of his white-trash roots. Well, I was born into a trailer park too, so fuck him.

Literary: Adam-Troy Castro's "Spider-Man/Sinister Six" novels. Funny, involving, and very Marvel. These are not phoned-in. Nuff Said!

Audiovisual: Gilmore Girls. Love it, been there since episode one. It's going to end soon, when Rory graduates Yale, and I will be there too.

Musical: Rent. (the Movie) It captured something authentic about that time and place, for all its cheesiness. If a nerdy or arty preteen sees this and loves it, I know that kid is going to be okay.

Celebrity: Justine Bateman. I missed her episode of "Arrested Development" and I'm pissed. I wish she got more work. Really.

Alcoholic: Michelob Ultra. It tastes horrible, but it is about 5 calories less than Bud Lite and sometimes 5 calories is a lot.

Pharmacological: Benadryl. So what if I self-medicate. I sleep like a baby.

Philosophical: I listened to Tony Robbins' tapes. Didn't work. I bought Wayne Dwyer's books. He doesn't really say anything. I read Albert Ellis. It kinda works, some of the time, for some things, sorta -- which is exactly what he promises, and I am happier than ever.

Sexual: Due to bandwidth limitations, I can't go into a full explanation here. Just dress up like Spock, Data, or Seven (your choice) and meet me at Jolene Blaylock's house 7 years from next Tuesday, then I'll show you something.

Park Chan-wook: The Shakespeare of our time.

This is one of those times when  I am so grateful to have a blog.

After seeing Park Chan-wook's magnificent film "Oldboy" the other day, I sought out the first entry of his Vengeance trilogy - the 2002 box office failure "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" (aka "Vengeance is Mine" - "Boksuneun naui geot") which is the most intense, affecting tragedy I've ever experience outside of Shakespeare or the Greeks. Brilliantly photographed , the story is told with breathtakingly powerful images juxtapositioned to mark the passage of time, the emotional states of the characters, (compare the action's of one actor's face during two separate autopsy scenes) and the surprises of the plot. The film is a masterpiece of story construction, pulling off as only one of its many unexpected feats ...

[slight to medium SPOILERS below the jump]

Wells and Welles: "Jolly good new noises."

The old world and the new world met in an extraordinary 7 minute clip of a joint interview with Orson Welles and H.G. Wells recorded sometime after the beginning of WW II but before the U.S. entry into that war. We get Wells' impression of the famous Mercury Theater radio adaption of The War of the Worlds (he liked it) and a discussion of Hitler -- who evidently referred to that broadcast and the ensuing "panic" as an example of the weakness inherent under democratic governments. Also some context on how the British interpreted the reaction to the broadcast by the American radio-listenting public. What a piece of history.

Download 401028_wells_meets_welles.mp3

And why not follow this up with Muddy Waters' Whisky Blues for no other reason than it just happened to play next on my iTunes after the Wells recording?

Download whiskey_blues.mp3

Public Domain: The Great Gabbo

I saw The Great Gabbo in a high school film class and have never forgotten it. Starring the great silent-era film director, Erich Von Stroheim as Gabbo, this film tells (certainly not for the last time in Hollywood history, and probably not the first) the old sweet tale of a ventriloquist driven mad by his dummy.

The Mercury Theatre on the Air

Get .torrents (other formats also available) of Orson Welles, Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotton et al radio dramas, including adaptations of Dracula, Heart of Darkness, and many many more! Link: The Mercury Theatre on the Air.

Superhero Cartoons

To coincide with the publication of my story Super-Villains, Son&Foe has linked to a a couple public domain cartoons: A Max Fleischer Superman, and a Mighty Mouse.

Tags:  Writing Comics Superhero

Free Read: Super-Villains

My story "Super-Villains" is now unlocked at Son & Foe.com

Tags:  Writing Comics Superhero

Weight Loss Challenges of the Operatically Proportioned

I found this while searching online for the calorie count in Nyquil. I didn't find out, (but one news site says Nyquil-like substances contain 19 grams of carbs, so I'm guessing 1 dose of Nyquil is around 80 calories) but I found this article on the nutritional challenges of opera singers strange and compelling. If you guessed the authors of this study can't resist opening with a bit about "the fat lady singing" you are right. The Diva Syndrome:

Not all, but an inordinate proportion of professional singers, both males and females, appear to suffer from the diva syndrome. [...]

Most singers have sick-day food rituals. According to them, nearly all illnesses (and all medications) have effects on their voices, so virtually all illnesses are viewed by them as voice-connected. Many teachers and vocal coaches advise their singers on medications, foods, and drinks both for their voice-related problems and for their more general illnesses. One singer reported that when she had a temperature of 103[degrees] her teacher counseled her to exercise until she worked up a sweat and then to wrap up in a blanket, take Nyquil at bedtime, buy a specific throat lozenge, and abstain from taking any antihistamines. After finally seeing a physician, she called to cancel her voice lesson, but her voice teacher insisted she come to her lesson anyway. Singers self-medicate with herbal teas, lemon and honey drinks, and specific throat lozenges to permit them to continue with the performance when feeling ill or not singing well. They also use home remedies to alleviate the discomfort of the cold or allergy.

Tags: Opera Nyquil

The Man Who Was Thursday

I've been exploring BBC Radio- 7 which has tons - and I mean tons - of radio dramas and comedies to listen too.  Just started this week is a 13 episode adaptation of G.K. Chesterson's metaphysical spy novel. One of my favorite books.

Dark Cabal Deathwatch

May Posts: 5 (begun late in the month: 5/24).
June Posts: 19.
July Posts through today: 2. (one each from two members who've outed themselves.)

Nice run, guys ;-) -- Or is everyone simply on summer vacation?

Funny, to me it just seemed like a typical stunt by some web brats. Then their self-unmasking revealed them having real standing in the genre.  Now, in retrospect, it seems like bullying.   

The Latest Dark Cabal: The Comforts of Horror.

Work ... yeah right.

Today "I worked" on my novel rewrite about 6 hours, there is that to be said for unemployment anyway. More time to write.  I think I am about 2 or 3 months away from a draft I would be able to show people. That's exciting. There are no more major overhauls to do, at least from what I can see with mid-polish myopia. There's a few logic/sense type things to clear up, and a lot of language sharpening to do. The skeleton is strong, the scenes that need to be there are there, now I can work on the paragraphs, the sentences, the phrases. I try to work macro to micro, resisting the urge to make small corrections til I'm convinced that overall structure is correct, lest I end up reworking and reworking some scene that really doesn't belong in the story at all.

Sure, I called this work in quotes at the top, but it's not really work at all. Outside of writing the initial draft of something, working on the sentences, strengthening the beats in each scene, one by one, is about the most fun thing in the world -- not work at all. 

Apple - iTunes - Download iTunes

Spent some time today browsing podcasts via iTunes 4.9 Too much information, though (typically for Mac products) very user friendly. One of the best features is that  podcasts are bookmarkable. That is, if you leave a podcast to listen to something else, then go back to the first one, it will continue playing where you left off, not starting over from the beginning. However most of the featured podcasts seem to be Disney-created programming. (Am I allowed to mention Disney without paying a royalty?) My advice to budding 'casters: jump ahead  a few levels to an eventual likely technology. Have your career in HD3DVcasting all mapped out so you can jump right in when the technology becomes available and stake out some higher ground for yourself. Radio is cool though. I'm looking for original podcast dramas but haven't found any yet.

Tangent Online Reviews "Quark"

I missed this review earlier, but my story is still online (here) -- which is why I love webzines as markets.

"Michael Canfield contributes “A Flavor of Quark.” This story is a tale within a tale, told by an old woman to her “grandiekids” at bedtime. It is a most un-bedtime-like story of a man and monkey who are attempting to destroy the universe. In doing so, they create a new one. I didn’t fully buy into this story; the grandma’s authorial voice felt uncomfortable in its shift between homespun dialect and scientific detail, while of the two other central characters, Byrne’s logic and motivation seemed deeply flawed and hard to believe. Finnigan the monkey was the most likeable character to me, but ultimately his presence didn’t save the story, which has some intriguing ideas in it but which seemed to me to have no real central focus." -- Ben Payne. Link: Tangent Online Review of Lenox Avenue #5, March/April 2005.

Christopher Hitchens:

"Write as if it's your last words. Because then you can be sure that you don't wonder, 'Will the agent like this? Will my publisher say, 'Well, couldn't we punch it up a bit more or make it more fancy?' What will my family think?” All the things that constrain people. "

From: Stop Smiling Magazine: The magazine for high-minded lowlifes.

Found Poetry

Lines Drifting Through an Open Window

    I'm going to bartending school
    And I'm going to learn to be a bartender
    Then I'm going to Iceland
    And I'm going to be a bartender there

Books:Treeware

Via Boing Boing: Jargon discovered in the comments area of John Scalzi's still lively post on ebook "piracy."

Piracy ... Arrrrr!

Creative Commons Photos

Browsing through Flickr's Creative Commons page which is a great place to be if you haven't seen enough photos of other people's vacations or the ubiqutious four-friends-in-a-bar-near-campus-arms-around-each-other's-shoulders-thumbs-up-spilling-their-vodka-cranberry's shots. But I think this guy's brightly colored portraits are wonderful.

Flickr: Photos from royblumenthal.

Best Post Ever

This is the Best of My Recollection (Jan 01 - April 16 '05)

Best SF series: Deadwood. (for its rich world building, and its unflinching, unique examination of social structures and the birth of civilizations. Will it end with a moment of transcendence? I'm not convinced it won't).

Best Novel to read if you can't get enough "Deadwood" -- "A Prayer for the Dying" Steward O'Nan

Best Horror series: Nip/Tuck Series 2.  Begins with the horror of turning forty, ends with  marvelous Alec Baldwin's fey mad doctor cameo. In between: hallucinations, incest, surgical disasters, murder, mind fucks, and "The Carver." Just don't do what I did -- which is watch the whole series in a week (thank you .torrents). This sunlit Gothic will deeply disturb you especially if you concurrently read:

Best Nonfiction Horror: "The Sociopath Next Door" by Martha Stout.

Best Vilified Movie:
A tossup. "Sin City" inexplicably (to me) offended or annoyed a lot of people who I'm usually more in sympathy with. Or, "Million Dollar Baby" which did win the Oscar, and critical accolades but offended the Limbaugh right. I have to give the edge to the latter because of:

Best Assumption by Coworker: She saw "Baby", didn't like it because it was violent. When I told her I loved it, she said "Why? Do you enjoy seeing women beaten up?" Okay, ya got me.

Best Short Story in my writing workshop: "Bird Day" by Nisi Shawl. Soon to be published to great acclaim, I'm sure.

Lots more:

Sin-croni-City: Blood and Verses

  Went to see SIN CITY today, and loved it. Tonight, reading Michael Shermer's The Science of Good and Evil I've come across the poem "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley with states in another way the very thing I found beautiful about this film:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Voices in my head

Got my iPod shuffle yesterday -- after a few weeks on back order. Any (unlikely) future historian digging up the remnants of this blog in the layers and layer of digital archives will have a hard time understanding my fascination with the amazing gadget - weightless, and exactly the length of my middle finger -- now hanging under around my neck and under my shirt. I'm walking around the apartment, spot scrubbing fingerprints off the wall while listening to Bill Clinton's Book Expo America Keynote address, and later Stephen King's reading of his story "LT's Theory of Pets." (Not coincidentally, And while I'm waiting for my nifty iPod shuffle Armband to come off backorder,  I joined Audible.com today.)

"Peas & Carrots" review

by James Palmer. Entire Feb issue fo RoF reviewed here:
Tangent Online.

Too little time to finish tasks? You're typical.

by Bill Hendrick
Cox News Service
March 8, 2005

ATLANTA -- Almost never finish everything on your to-do list because you run out of time? Or mad at yourself that you haven't folded the clothes? Or taken the trash out to the curb?

But, nonetheless, you still agree to do things a month from now that you're already too busy to do today?

If that's you, don't despair. Most of us are like that, and, according to a new study, scientists now think they know why:

When people are in the midst of their daily living, they're pretty good at gauging how many chores or even spur-of-the-moment invitations they can handle at the moment.

But give them more time to figure out their constraints -- say, a commitment made for next week or next month -- and their procrastination instinct kicks in, scientists Gal Zauberman of the University of North Carolina and John Lynch Jr. of Duke University report.

"Most of us are pretty lousy at predicting how much spare time we'll have in the future, but we are blissfully unaware of this," said Lynch. The pair's study is in this month's peer-reviewed Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Great extracts for Milton Glaser's "Ten Things I have Learned"

"...when you are doing something in a recurring way to diminish risk or doing it in the same way as you have done it before, it is clear why professionalism is not enough. After all, what is desirable in our field, is continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success. Professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal."

On changes in style:

"It’s absurd to be loyal to a style. It does not deserve your loyalty. [...]But the point is that anybody who is in this for the long haul has to decide how to respond to change in the zeitgeist.

"DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY.
Everyone always talks about confidence and believing in what you do. I remember once going to a class in Kundalini yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a more practical sense. Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being sceptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Of course we must know the difference between scepticism and cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one’s openness to the world as passionate belief is. They are sort of twins."

And much more. These are just a taste. Read the whole piece is here:

http://www.miltonglaserposters.com/news/pub_10.htm

Thanks, boingboing

Hard Case Crime

And check this out. I can't be the only one nuts for these retro paperback covers. (Don't answer that.)

Amazon Link to the King cover. (Just to prove it's real ...)

 

 

Aimee Mann Cover

Mann's next album has cover art by the guy who does all those great noir New Yorker Magazine covers.
What's his name. You know, this guy:

http://www.myspace.com/aimeemann

New Story Online

A Flavor of Quark is now up on Lenox Avenue. I haven't seen the table of content yet, as I write this Monday night, but they've had great stories in every issue I've seen. I'm very proud to have something of mine appear in the venue.

Adventures in Right-Wing Political Correctness II

Another quote from the same Dowd column:

"It's funny that the moviemaker stirring up the fuss is an icon of the right, a man the president's father aped when he said, 'Read my lips: No new taxes.' When I interviewed Mr. Eastwood in 1995, he said he thought his party was onto something with its nostalgia for the old values. But he also said he was more libertarian than conservative: 'The less you mess around with people, the better off people are.' That attitude is passé in the Republican Party. The Christian right thinks that the more you mess around with people, the better off people are. It is eager to dictate social, cultural and marital behavior, with an assist from the man whom it boasts it put back in the White House."

But the enforcers of conformity-through-fear have always turned on their own when easier victims become thin on the ground. In Salem, once all the odd-ball types had been burnt, only then did the pointing fingers turn to the pillars of the community.
As Joseph Welch, an attorney representing the Army said to Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin). Here Welch defends the reputation of Fred Fisher, a member of his staff. Fisher had been a member of a radical group for four months in college many years earlier. At the time of the hearing he was Secretary of the Young Republicans League in his hometown, Newton MA. :

American Rhetoric: McCarthy-Welch Exchange During the Army-McCarthy Hearings.

"Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty, or your recklessness."
&
"You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?"
-Welch to McCarthy

Adventures in Right-Wing Political Correctness

Some great thoughts  today in the NY Times.
Frank Rich's column on pre-censorship at PBS and other places.

And here's a wonderful quote about art from Maureen Dowd:

"[T]he purpose of art is not always to send messages. More often, it's just to tell a story, move people and provoke ideas. Mr. Eastwood's critics don't even understand what art is. Politics - not art - is about finding consensus with the majority of the audience. Art is not about avoiding controversy or ensuring that everyone leaves feeling morally uplifted."

The New York Times > Opinion >Maureen Dowd: Wherefore Art Thou, Clint?.
(contains Million $$ Baby spoilers.)

"Million Dollar Baby"

I saw "Million Dollar Baby" the other night. What a movie. (Clint Eastwood directed and wrote the musical score-- and co-stars w/ Morgan Freeman, Hillary Swank).  Some people thought it was depressing. It's not, but it is devastating. It starts out like the most straight-forward boxing movie you could imagine (just a really, really well made one) then it turns off into unexpected territory (some say it merely switched from one formula and genre to another).  I thought it was very powerful. I've heard some (to my mind) amazingly simplistic opinions of what this film is alleged to be saying, or advocating. But I don't think it's about that at all. (Can't get specific without spoilers) I think it's about some people who know each other, and start to care about each other. And get things they want, and don't get other things they want, and make their peace  with it, or don't. Nothing more, but that's so much more than most stories bother with. The movie's generally garnering praise, but some, like David Edelstein  (scroll down past his review of "The Aviator" to find it --  but his "Million  Dollar Baby" review contains  spoilers) thought every inch of the film is  cliche, I thought everything wasemotionally honest. It's not "saying"  anything in the sense of a message, it's just people trying to work it out, and making choices and accepting those choices. I simply don't know why someone would rather act superior and snotty about their awareness of cliche, and feel the need to show everyone how smart they are, when it means cutting themselves off from such an extraordinary, moving experience. But one man's truth is another's cliche, I guess. My problem with many  reviewers is two-fold. Edelstein is bad, and David Denby of the The New Yorker, and Richard Roeper of across the aisle from Ebert are two of the worst. (Ebert, and the other New Yorker critic, Anthony Lane are excellent however). First the truly incompetent reviewer has no idea what goes into making any  piece of art. But there is no reason why he or she should should. But worse is that he seems to have no idea why people even seek out movies, or any work of art , in the first place. I think that's the real crime of shitty movie reviewing.

Web Fun I

Now that I've upgraded to 1.5mb DSL (from their former maximum service of 640k) I do notice a difference in speed. I tested it by downloading one of those short movies that Amazon produces.

The big 75mb file took about thirty minutes at my old setup and only about 14 minutes under the new.

Now I can download ham-fisted, pretentious, simplistic, message-cinema crammed full of product placements in half the time. Life is good.

I liked Blair Underwood's acting though. His face is intensely expressive.  Another film, the orange one, is visually interesting. The Tooth Fairy one, and the wish-fullfillment one with Minnie Driver, are, respectively, trivial and ineptly-exectuted.  Probably my favorite thing about the whole series are the credits scrolling at the end. The credits seem to run about a third the length of the actual movie. The first name on the credits is the lead actor, the next ten or twelve names are of the companies and their products that were featured. Then comes the names of the other actors.

New Category

Find links to all my available free fiction through this archive category: Free Fiction

Respect for Acting

People asked why I say actor in the last post and not actress. [No, they didn't, but it came up at work the other day in a completely different context.] I used to hang around the theater in NYC and I was in a few two off-off Broadway plays. It was hard work ...

Is it good?

It's good.
Shatner/Folds.
Buy it. 

JengaJam.com >> The Cat With Hands (MOV, 6.4mb)

TRULY CREEPY short web film.JengaJam.com >> The Cat With Hands (MOV, 6.4mb)