Strangest thing seen/heard today, but not really that strange

Sometimes the mildly strange is strange enough.

1) I'm working late tonight and just came in from getting some fresh air. The security guard at the hospital entrance was not one of the guys I'm used to seeing during the day. He was, in fact, a strikingly handsome, middle-aged guy. I'm talking head-snapping, movie star looks, but also definitely well into his 40's, with that thick, middle-aged guy build and a bit of salt in his pepper. Why is this weird, you ask? I dunno, it's just that given the elements "security guard," "really handsome," and "middle-aged," I can imagine an intersection of any two of those, but not all three. He nodded to me as I walked by. Just like they all do.

2) At the coffee shop, I overheard two guys having a lengthy and detailed discussion of strategies for dealing with traffic in... the San Francisco Bay Area. There was a weird moment of mental dissonance as the words "Dunbarton bridge" and "880 South" filtered into my consciousness. The two coastal chapters of my life are rather separate in time and thus in my thoughts, but I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that there are other people in the world who've lived in both San Francisco and New York.

Funniest T-Shirt Seen Recently

"I was told there would be no math"

Heh. I know what you mean.

Speaking of Urban Triumphalism

This is seriously the coolest thing I think I've ever seen. After this goes through, Jetsons flying cars can't be far off.

Perspective

Last weekend I had the unexpected experience of attending a gay softball game. I haven't played, much less taken seriously, softball since elementary school. Anyway, my friend L- dragged me there as a good deed, I think, trying to get me to be a little more social, and he probably had a point as far as that goes. Talking to one of the players, here's the thing that struck me:

The team I saw play was part of a gay softball league based in NYC. There are, I think, about 10 people on a softball team. There are 4-8 teams per division, and there are 5 divisions in the league. Now, I realize this amounts to, at most, a few hundred people in a city of millions. But here's the thing: that's just the gay people who like to play softball, as opposed to the gay people who play some other sport (I know of a gay roadrunner's club, swimmer's club, and triathlete's club in NYC, off the top of my head). And THAT's only the gay people who like some sport enough to play it competitively as opposed to all the others out there who might be playing whatever but don't have the time or inclination. And THAT's only the gay people who LIKE sports, as opposed to those with some other social hobby.

The lesson here: there is a whole mess of gay people in New York City. The Big Island of the gay archipelago, you might say.

A Much Funnier New York Blog Than Mine

www.overheardinnewyork.com

I think this is my favorite. Damn STRAIGHT you can't beat a spicy rock...

I Did Not Know That

You can stick a big fat "?!" after each of these, as far as I'm concerned:

1) Ann Bancroft was married to Mel Brooks
2) There was an attempted fascist coup against FDR
3) George W. Bush is "sex-positive"
4) Orrin Hatch wears a mezuzah pendant around his neck
5) William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor dated, back in the day.

File Under: No Shitting

This is a terribly written article and the scientist in question is rather sketchy but the basic finding of this study is pretty straightforward (ha, ha... did I just say "straight?"): If you take a bunch of guys who say they're bisexual and show them gay, dyke, and het pr0n, they mostly only pitch wood when there are boys on screen. I know, shocking, innit? I believe the investigator's next study involves determining the religious affiliation of the pope.

Internet Movie Dumbass Bonanza

As we all know, there are a handful of websites that have become basic internet tools for anyone who spends much time online: Google, Mapquest, Weather.com and so forth.

If you're a movie fan, there's IMDB, the Internet Movie DataBase. I probably visit at least once a week. Where have I seen that actor before? Damn, that was a good movie - what else has that guy directed? That sort of thing. It's an excellent resource, and the more I've started to explore older and foreign films, the more I rely on it to gain some context for what I've just seen, or am considering seeing.

That's why it's such a disappointment that the forums on IMDB are filled with the biggest bunch of booger-eating morons I've ever seen. You'd think the message boards for the biggest movie-themed website out there would be crowded with tiresome art school cineastes waxing ironic, right? I wish. From what I can tell, they're full, instead, of thirteen year old wankers who expect all movies to conform to the standard of television. There is scarcely one word of considered criticism, either positive or negative, that I've seen there, and reviewers and commenters alike appear to be people who haven't actually seen very many movies. The overriding sentiment is either confusion over some obvious plot development or anger that the movie in question is not identical to some other movie the commenter liked.

When I started this post, I had big plans to surf on over and cut n' paste some examples of forum crapitude from the IMDB boards, so we could all have a chuckle but frankly, I just can't do it. I cannot read through that idiocy looking for especially retarded comments because they're all retarded, and I become retardeder by the second as I read them. The best I can offer is to recreate the flavor of IMDB from my tormented memory:

hey guys can anybod tell me who that cute guy was who plaid the brother i think he was gr8t!!!

this movie totally sucked it was just like pulp fixion only pulp fixion was better

Taranteeno sux!!!

no YOU SUck you obviously dont know anything about directign this movie totally stold everything from tarnatino and you cant say anythign intellient about the movie so your just attacking me bc you dont have anything to say

hi everyone can u tell me where getting this movie i am in norway and play area 2 DVD

dude u need to move to a real country

And so forth.
Can it really be true that there isn't a mainstream internet forum where mentally competent adults go to discuss the cinemar?

I Confess

I have to admit that I really dig it at night when there's no traffic around, but the streetlights keep the outdoors pretty light, and I can walk right down the middle of the street in my neighborhood as if it were daylight with nobody around like a ghost town. It's weird, but I like it, I do.

Dilogies

Friday night I was in the mood, for the first time in a while, to see a movie out at the theater. There's a big multiplex right near the hospital, so I headed over after work to see what was playing. The answer of course was all the usual summer dummies. I gave serious thought to seeing Star Wars - I'd seen the other two movies in the 2nd trilogy, after all, and this was supposed to be better than those stinkers. But... I just couldn't get into it. I don't care what happens next. I realized this is the second time recently that I crapped out on a big movie trilogy; the other was The Lord of the Rings. I actually liked the first two movies, but after the passage of time, I just didn't care any more about what happened, not enough anyway to pay $10 and sit there for 3 hours. It seems a little odd to me invest in the first two movies of these two trilogies and pass on the third, not because I hated the other movies but just because... eh.

So instead, in the spirit of filling out a lapsed series, I went to see Batman Begins. I hadn't seen any of the Batman movies after the first two (not counting, of course, the great Adam West original, which will always be the BEST Batman movie) and I can't really imagine why I even saw those. Dreadful. So why'd I bother with this last one? Two words: Christian Bale.

Woof.

As brainless superhero movies go, it was pretty good, approximately as uninsulting to the intelligence as Spiderman was, but with more kung fu. Yeah, I know, kung fu! Ninjas, even! That was a plus, as was watching Michael Caine as the butler Alfie Alfred, just because watching Michael Caine do anything is a plus. On the down side, there was seeing Liam Neeson embarass himself playing a villain who was half over-the-top silly and half take-it-easy-with-the-Osama-bin-Laden-references disturbing, and wanting to smack the puffy lips off Katie Holmes for a) being convincingly self-righteous in the film, and b) having anything to do with Tom Cruise, who, by the way, is why I did not even consider seeing War of the Worlds. On the subject of Katie Holmes, I don't quite see why she's supposed to be such a knockout. Most of her looks comes from looking young - she IS young, for one thing, and she has babyfaced features that make her look sort of archetypally young. But she's not really beatiful like, say, Nicole Kidman, who's so perfect she makes your teeth hurt to look at her. It seems to me like Holmes' appeal is less to an ideal of beauty than to a barely-legal impulse. And now she's a Scientologist. Ugh... Tom Cruise - So. icky.

Yeah, so the summary review for Batman Begins: Christian Bale - hotter than anyone but me seems to realize. Katie Holmes: not as hot as everyone but me seems to think. Batman Begins - fortified with extra kung fu and a much cooler batmobile than that prettyboy sports car of Tim Burton's. Speaking of looks-good-less-filling Tim Burton, I may not like him, but I'm still going to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

One note on the movie theater - I like going to the movies alone (as well as with other people) because I get to sit in my favorite seat: the very front row. Friday, though, I actually had to get up and move 4 rows back just to be able to resolve what was on the screen, and because the headrests on the chairs made it impossible to comfortably tip your head back and look up to the middle of the screen. The nice thing is that the screen was huge, but the couple rows were just too damn close to do anybody any good. Now, my question is, what's the point of that? I know that theater owners want to maximize ticket sales and minimize square footage, etc, but there's no way I would sit still for being stuck in the front row in this theater even in a sold-out situation. And I like sitting in the front row. So how could it possibly work out for this theater to have 3-4 aisles that are too close even for first-row enthusiasts like me? I don't get it.

The only other thing to be said on this subject is a little love note to the MPAA. A couple of weeks ago, I went into the bodega here on my street to get some... whatever, milk, bread, beer, etc. The Yemeni guy who owns the place was entertaining himself behind the counter with one of those tiny-size DVD players like you can rent at the airport. The movie he was watching? Batman Begins.