KXVU

Ok I’m upgrading this from a comment to a full-blown post.

As we all know, Mr. Erwin Stoff wants to take a fat dump on Cowboy Bebop.  By total coincidence, Hildebeast and I happen to have spent the entire Christmas break sick, on the couch, watching Cowboy Bebop.  I have a new newfound respect for that show every time I watch it.  As western as it is, it could never have come from Americans; Its charm, subtlety, attention to detail, and respect for its own subject matter are all foreign concepts to the man who brought us Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, and I Am Legend.

He’s going to turn the only show that’s every successfully combined felicitousness and bad-ass…. into heavy handed, brooding cornpone.

So.  That said…

Fantasy Casting?  I mean the dude has a boner for Keanu Reeves, but I don’t think he’d actually be cynical enough to cast him as Spike.  On second thought, forget fantasy casting - why hold out any hope?  Nightmare casting scenarios:

Spike: Shiaya LeBouffe
Jet: Will Smith
Faye: Hannah Montanna
Edward: CG, Voiced Eddy Murphy

Discuss…….. if you dare.

I am posting these in lieu of orangejello who found the following two bits of information.  He won’t be out of work and be able to post “before the reverse vampire sets in” which we all understand.  Years of dealing with a friend who stinks like roasted garlic every Friday night is tiresome, but I guess we still keep him around for the priceless non sequiturs.

Regardless, first the stinky one sends me a link to HSX (the fantasy stock market based on movies and actors) to depress me regarding the apparent preliminary casting of a potential Cowboy Bebop movie.  And immediately after that, he tells me to look in Firefox at the about:robots page, which is admittedly very cute and funny. Has to read be in Firefox though.

And so that I contribute some substance, this week’s Overheard in DC.  Happy 2009 to all.

(ed. addition) More substance, a link to the decision on the Watchmen being Fox’s property-to-distribute as opposed to Warner Brothers’.  Basic answer, bad lawyering seems to have led WB to shoot itself in the leg.  In summary: 1) The third party producer neglected/failed to buy-out Fox, 2) the third-party producer’s lawyer advised him to not give testimony due to attorney-client privilege which seems to have been a poorly timed idea and means none of that information will be admitted later, & 3) WB knew about Fox’s potential claim before they fully committed to the movie so they should have done more to secure their rights.

What staggers me at the moment?  In terms of humor, an elf union newsletter at McSweeney’s that gives insight into the plight of Santa’s little wage slaves.  In terms of politics, nothing can top Blago appointing the next Illinois Senator despite his corruption scandal.  What makes it better is that the appointee may not be that bad at all since this Burris guy is a 71-yr old senior black Illinois statesman who says he will not run for reelection, but just serve out the 2 years.  Moreover, the Congress may not be able to constitutionally do anything about the appointment, because of a really old Supreme Court case I read in Con Law 1 that was a cute squib of a thought at the time but not expected to ever be relevant again.  (Effectively, Burris is older than 30 and a Illinois resident, so he’s qualified to sit as the Senator.  If Blago were to have appointed himself, he would have the right to sit, but then would be immediately thrown out by a 2/3rds vote of the Senate based on the issues involving his corruption scandal.)  In terms of events, orangejello and I are going to see Wu Tang Clan in Baltimore on New Year’s Eve; my mother asked if I was going to bring a gun for protection.  It’s going to be an awesome show, and we won’t die… probably.  In terms of movies, everything I’ve chosen to see so far this season, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Wrestler so far with Slumdog Millionare on my list to see before school starts.

or, howzabout these links!

I would like pingpong to please comment on this article:
Malcolm Gladwell on picking teachers

It would be great if Bfarn or someone could tell me where 3d animators publish awesomeness like this:
gangsta chimp

And this last one is for everyone (yo, Changston - how do I embed videos?):
you best not step to B&E

Changston and I had a discussion about the question in the title post. With too much free time on my hands, I’m taking a shot at writing this down in public:

The simple, one-sentence reason banks “aren’t lending money” (they actually are, at a much lower volume than in the recent past and only for properties/companies/ideas they consider relatively safe, but the premise is generally right and echoes what I hear people say all the time so let’s stick with it) is because there are forces at work that encourage banks to keep as much money in house, on their own balance sheets, in good ol’ reliable cash, rather than lend it out.

What are those forces?  Look below the fold. And to spoil the ending, I don’t see anything changing in the near future, until a whole lot of fear can be overcome.

» Read the rest of this entry …

I’m back in Oakland for the Yuletide, and thought I would renew my drivers license while I was here since it was set to expire next year.  This couldn’t be done online since I’ve moved since the last address on my license.  I made an appointment and brought proof of address within CA (at my parent’s home) so as to avoid any issues of the do-you-really-live-in-CA sort.  But after filling out the paperwork, I was told since I was attempting to renew early (since when is within 6 months early?) I had to take a written exam.  Seriously?  I haven’t thought about this since I was 16, which was quite a while ago.  Test is 18 questions, three answer options each, and I could only get 3 wrong.  I passed, barely, getting 3 wrong.  So I get to keep my superior looking CA license, with the corrective lens restriction removed and a new picture on top of that.

Aside from that thrilling adventure, life in Oakland is the same as always.  I’m getting music for my younger cousins for Christmas, and taking Pacrand’s advice from long ago for the two teenage girls, getting them Portishead and Massive Attack.  Well, one of them might get Imogen Heap instead, but there is certainly more trip-hop than in previous years.  My aunt is getting Season 1 of Flight of the Conchords, but I still can’t figure out what to get my immediate family.

The most fun I’m going to have this holiday with the extended family involves innocently acting like I know less about the ongoing family drama than I do, and speaking to one of the elder matriarchs (who is nice, but holds some strong and bigoted old-country views) about acceptance of mixed children (a great-grandchild) in the family (as opposed to the active rejection of the non-blood parent and child).  The funny thing is, she and I get along great, and most of the time I think she forgets that I’m not 100% of the family ethnicity or some other version of Caucasian.  The arguments to convince her are [1] how well I turned out (peanut gallery comments are not needed) and [2] how our president-elect is half-black & half-white and-isn’t-that-an-incredible-thing?  Of course “I know nothing” about the drama, so I won’t be trying to preach to her about how she’s acting wrongfully, which means she’ll listen.  Beyond that, who knows, but one can hope, and one can also take some pleasure out of convincing another to accept one’s views as correct.

To have your adversary accept and believe your views, and adopt them as their own, that is the greatest victory.  -Sun Tzu (paraphrased)

Fighting for a spot at the salad bar with Harold Ramis.

What do I do during finals?  Mostly I expect to be bored and hoping I don’t fall asleep and the students cheat like crazy.  Luckily the teachers are way more sophisticated at cheating than the kids, so when we do stuff like forbid water bottles from the desks, any electronic devices until everyone is done with the test, no sharing of pencils and erasers between students, check hands and arms before the test, and double check that everyone put the right form letter on their test the students wonder why.  Seriously, the teachers give them ideas for how to cheat in other classes by what we check for.

But how do I feel right now?  A wierd combination of emotions.  On one side I’m happy I don’t really have any work to do until January.  Just get through one more day of review, check for cheating, and throw some scantrons through a machine before calculating final grades.  Fallout won’t really come until January, but I will have evidence backed up for all grades and no one is going to change drastically via the final.  Another part of me feels kind of like Oscar Schindler at the end of that movie.  “This watch could help one more student pass the class.”  In my lowest level class I will have probably 8 F’s and 6 D’s, in a class of 30.  There is very little I can do about some of the choices they made to get where they are, but most teachers would rather have every student earn at least a C.  Oh well, there’s always summer school, hopefully they actually give a crap 2nd semester.

Seriously, I feel completely adrift.  I’ll clean and oragnize my room at some point, I suppose… maybe put up some decorations finally.  But I just want to turn my brain off until Januaray.  I almost made it to the gym today, but considering the late night and getting out of bed at 12, that “almost” was pretty far away.  Whatever, I can affor a little decompression time, and that gives me the opportunity to have bullet point time.

• I shared this with Pacrand already, but here are things bears love.
• I am somewhat disturbed by the complete lack of a sense of privacy that children/teens have regarding the Internet; I feel really old typing that.
• I spend all of my legal research time on West or Lexis, hopefully I won’t have to in the future, and I can save clients hundreds of dollars because of this man’s initiative.
• Found from the facebook page of a certain guy in Israel we all know, Photoshopped sentiment regarding the Big 3 Bailout.

I suppose I am for the auto industry bailout, because if the government “rescued” the financial industry with ~50 times as much taxpayer money when those companies weren’t able to articulate at all why we should trust them to use the money wisely or at least as the public needs it going forward, it’s only fair to give the auto industry the same blank check.

Most kids’ stream-of-consciousness storytelling is great, making declarative statements that are obviously linked in their minds yet are disconnected to most anyone else.  Yet somehow this is even more adorable for being in French.   Such cuteness is amplified in Chinese children as well.  The downside is that they grow up in to adult French and Chinese people, respectively.  Alas, but they are wonderful at this age.