Can you tell I watched Lost in Translation recently?

For relaxing dirt, make it... Suntory Dirt.

So, which NBC exec went to Stanford?

I just watched the Knight Rider made-for-tv movie. In it, the comely daughter of the dead scientist teaches at Stanford. And the fly-over shots are accurate, but that's stock videography. The exterior shots of when she leads the library are not Stanford, which makes sense: if you're filming in LA, you aren't going to pack up to film Stanford.

But they got some stuff weirdly right. The sign in the library said, "Go Cardinal, the AXE is ours!" Which correctly gets the pluralization of our mascot correct (it's singular), and refers to the object of our rivalry. Touches like these are the hallmark of alma mater affinity.

But another show debuting on NBC this fall, Chuck, features a protagonist that failed out of Stanford. In the few flashbacks, again, large details are out of whack: the frat house doesn't look like any Stanford frat house. But again, no tv dorm room ever looks like a dorm room. But the little touches. They show Chuck's college ID card, and it's a well formatted SUID card, instantly recognizable to any Stanford student.

So, why? I'm thinking there's an NBC exec that went to Stanford, and so toady little show runners are telling their staffs (staves?) that they need to set things at Stanford, and get the details right!

I imagine tens of fact checkers scouring through Wikipedia articles and Facebook Wall Postings and USNews College Board Discussions for the hints of veracity that'll make this mythic benefactor smile with remembrance of his heady college days.

Christ's Vicar in the Air

This article from the Times talks about the Pope and abortion. Big surprise: he's anti-. And he'll excommunicate politicians who backed a measure legalizing them in Mexico. Question 1: will he excommunicate those who voted for such politicians? Those who vote for such politicians in the future? Those who provide aid and comfort to such politicians?

But these geopolitically religious questions get in the way of a larger question. The Times says the comments were made "during an airborne news conference aboard the plane carrying him". Now, we all know about the Popemobile. But what do we call this fantastic vehicle of Papal Transport? The airplance that can return the Prelate of St. Peter's Basilica to his Rome dome home? That can speed to court a Pontiff plaintiff? (perhaps there to deliver his sartorial wisdom with a vestment testament) That can, with altitude, make the mitre mightier?

Pope Force One.






(Though we also would have accepted VHoly See-25)

Pronunciation Realization

Where do you place the accent in the word "Caribbean"? Per se, I normally accent it as ca-RIB-be-an. But, I realized, in reference to the Johnny Depp vehicle, I pronounce "the Pirates of the CA-ri-BE-an". And when I think about it, I realize that doing so makes the phrase iambic (yes, with a femine rhyme, which is why there's an extra syllable on the end). Why?

Robert Frost said writers in English have a choice between two meters: strong iambic and weak iambic.

I guess readers in English only have those two choices, as well.

Opt-what now?

I just signed up for Consumer Reports. Spending $26 so I can save money. That's why I spent 5 years in college.

But as I'm signing up, they have this form item:

We occasionally send e-mail notification of special ConsumerReports.org events and updates or news about other Consumer Reports activities or products. If you do not want to receive such notices let us know by checking "Opt out."

Opt In
Opt Out

Now, I appreciate the ability to marginally reduce my spam load by telling them "I'd rather not, really." But they are using standard terms of nerdery and cred and nerd cred to make it appear that they get it.

When they don't.

And what's worse, the UI is unclear. Presumably, if you don't want to be bugged, you'd prefer an opt-in system, in which case, then you want to opt-out--

Look Consumer Reports. Let's get past the pleasantries. I'm giving you 26 dollars and a spam email address. You're going to give me some information on camcorders I want to buy, you're going to sell said email address to anyone who will pay for it, then you're going to give it away to anyone who can't. This isn't an affair of the heart; it's a shoddy electronic information passing encounter of prostitution.

Foster in Stereo (R)

Since so pitifully little of my work at The Onion - A.V. Club has made it into the web edition, I took the liberty of constructing a rudimentary page to host my articles to date. (I read and write HTML at a third-grade level). See it here:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze2788s/

At least it's not a members-dot-aol-dot-com page (quasi-sequitur: Stephen Glass used an AOL domain when constructing a bogus page for Jukt Micronics as part of the tapestry of fabulism he called a journalistic career.)

Hopefully, you'll read some of the stuff there and think: "Ah, of course he hasn't had time to post at The Enfranchised lately. The man is working toward a Pulitzer."

You Can Do Better: Rolling Stones

In this article, we find out that 300 horses are to be sedated as a Rolling Stones concert happens next to them.

In this edition of You Can Do Better, we invite you to to Do Better in comments.

Punchlines:

• Normally the 300 doses of horse tranquilizer at a Stones concert are for Keith Richards.
  
• So this is why Serbian Gangsters threaten you with sleeping with the horses.
  
• Some pun on the song title "Wild Horses".
  

Snakes in a Plain... old office building.

My, who's that handsome blogger over at the official Google Blog?

Oh, it's me!

I mean, it's I.

Fucking predicate nominative.

Discovered Clerihew

Reading Paul Fussell's Poetic Meter & Poetic Form (an excellent book for those who wanted to know more than they wanted to know about... poetic meter and poetic form), I read this example of graffito (absurd singular not added, but in the original):

"Soldiers who wish to be a hero
Are practically zero.
But those who wish to be civilians,
Jesus, they run into the millions."

Fussell introduces the poem to point out the value of Trochaic substitution. Jesus, in the fourth line, is a trochee (its first syllable is stressed, as opposed to an iamb in which the last syllable is stressed). This draws our attention (as does the fact that it's a the-tiniest-bit-naughty interjection). (Fussell doesn't mention that soldiers, parallel at the beginning of the first line, is also a trochee; the omission makes me wonder if he doesn't pronounce it as an iamb.)

But what he doesn't mention is that this is a Clerihew. And an excellent one at that. Because there is no prescription for meter, poets in the form cannot fall back on anything and have to find utility in the arbitrary; this anonymous has.

AKA the Testicle Tax

This image (which, if it's broken down, described a $1645 rebate for people willing to buy a Ford Mustang with an Automatic Transmission) is supply and demand at its barest.

What is the problem here? Simple, it's:

1. A Ford Mustang with
   
2. an automatic transmission.
   
   

If you're driving a sports car, don't be piloting a shuttlecraft where you occasionally give it some guidance to increase thrust or to fiddle with the cruise control or maybe a bit more to the left there, eh horseless carriage? If you're not too busy handling my hands-free bluetooth call to my manicurist?

Ford should just come out and call this incentive program what it is: a pussy rebate, for those who want to the veneer of a macho set of wheels that needn't hold up to fine inspection because they do not, in fact, have any friends who will be riding shotgun.

At least, not any that don't have to be inflated.

Pour Moi?

This story has everything going for it. The chair-throwing hard-work attitude of Bobbby Knight pushing for the nonsensical, Dan Rather-esque shouting of pizza-seller Dick Vitale, to get the latter into the College Basketball Hall of Fame. It follows up on Bobby Knight's redemption (at least in my eyes): the NBA recently decided that pros have to be out of high school for one year, which has pushed the LeBron Jameses of the world to college for one year of a degree they *know* they won't finish, and Knight has been the only college coach to talk about the harm this is doing to student-athletes. Before, anyone who came to college only *thought* they might not finish college, y'know, if they had a few good seasons. And this really is a good tale: Dickie V belongs in the College Basketball Hall. He is the voice of March for many people.

But he's that voice on ESPN, the same outlet that's running this story. Without disclaimer. And I realize this is an AP story, but ESPN, can't you please say "full disclosure: Dick Vitale is an employee of ESPN". Because when you don't, you endorse a story, a pity, a sympathy that, if it were followed up on, would benefit you. You'd get to do a special on DV, maybe a retrospective, best of commentary on ESPN Classic, and a reality TV show where DVitty goes back to school to finish up his degree and find his lost love on ESPNU (look, Rodney Dangerfield's dead, you can steal his part and Terry Farrell is still hotter than Perry Farrell).

So, ESPN, shill away: you're a Disney company, it's kind of your job. But also make it clear that you're Dick's Vital employer when you do.

Eventual Gander: British History for Dummies

[Review of British History for Dummies by Sean Lang]

There are times in history when one ought to be a fan of a certain publishing house. Scribner's Sons in the 20's. City Lights in the 50's. And now, For Dummies. Now, I'm sure that the For Dummies series prompts scorn and derision for some of their titles. I can only hope that Computers for Dummies reads something like this: "This is a mouse. You use it to do the obvious thing on your computer. When it breaks, you should do anything other than call your 'smart grandson' who does, in fact, have something better to do than help you digitize your photos of cats in front of a background of animated cats trying to hump other still life cats." I might be worried about my grandma taking offense at the previous sentence if not for the content of the previous sentence.

But the For Dummies books on Humanities and Social Sciences are awesome. The actual dummies, the ones who learn things just for grades, flock to Cliffs Notes. This brand, that in the technical realm caters to liberal arts majors on a deadline ("Our co-op newsletter needs to be out by Tuesday and it's not getting there 'til you learn Adobe Illustrator!"), caters, in the humanities realm, to liberal arts majors looking to have more info to masturbate out in casual cocktail party conversation. And so they find wholly competent authors who have a nice, cheeky sense of humor to write it. All the while giving you the facts without the pesky parts of textbooks. Y'know, the quizzes, the forced diversity ("minorities were important too during this period; check out this sidebar that shows a woman/black/poor person who had an interesting life story that is a sidebar because it doesn't fit in to the main story"), the repetition for students skimming a chapter introduction 3 minutes before class.

This is a textbook for people who want to learn, and want to have fun learning. Textbooks use a style that is dry, droll, and drab to make information easy to convey. Instead of dumbing down the words, Lang makes his style more interesting so you read closer. Consider the following chapter/section titles: "1066 and All That Followed", "Children of the Revolutions", "And What Have the Romans Ever Given Us in Return?", "Saxon, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll", "Who wants to be a William heir?", "Going Dutch", "Marlborough country", "Trouble Over: Brdiged Water", "The Battle of Warren Hastings". These are references to, somewhat respectively, an earlier satire of British History, Song Titles, Monty Python, awesome things, game shows, a good way to be told it's alright but you won't get laid, smoking, and historical occurrences themselves. I'm sure I've omitted several altogether awesome ones. And that made me pay closer attention. And that made me learn more.

The writing's funny, sure. In a wry, British manner, instructive itself. (In one passage about the revolts over Poll Tax, the writer notes that the disembodied head the peasants took was surely displayed on a vertical piece of wood using pole tacks). But all the cultural references make this book more admittedly a product of its own time than most are willing to admit. And it's short, a survey course, which means you get blasted with a lot, quickly. This is not a book to read a chapter or two of. If you want that, go to wikipedia. This is a book to read all of in one relatively fell swoop, so that you make connections you might miss if you read about single events. For instance, I had never quite realized that the Prince John who was the snivelling bastard in Robin Hood stories became the King John who, as a snivelling king, was forced by his barons to issue the Magna Carta. Let me know what connections you make.

Don't read this book because I recommend it. That perverts the purpose of this book. It is a book to be read only because you don't have to. The author made this book good; intent and intent alone can make it enjoyable.

It might make the Food Network, but how would they know?

You rarely think of the Amish as being gimmicky. Or, rather, they have their one gimmick, and stick to their schtick so thoroughly that you almost, for a second, think they maybe, just maybe they don't actually want to have fun. This lets you know that, in fact, they want to rage and be famous like the rest of us.

So, to the Amish: welcome.

To Don King: looks like there's a new (self-)promoter in town.

Dr. Foster's Dictionary: March 21, 2007

It's official. The distinction between high culture and low culture is no more. The Rubicon has been crossed...Il est fini....or, if you will, Git 'er Done.

If Borat didn't perform the coup de grâce, then certainly this Vanity Fair piece on British ex-pats in New York does. In the midst of his Anglo-baiting self-flagellation, A.A. Gill manages to comment on the "severe moose knuckle" caused by the British New Yorker's inproper deployment of American blue jeans. Let's see the entry and discussion from Dr. Foster's Dictionary.

moose knuck·le
[moos nuhk-uhl]
noun

1. A minor regional dysphemism from the middle-low American, having to do with the bifurcation and bulging of the scrotum and gonads, respectively, caused by a high-riding crotch seam on an overtight pair of pants. The sartorial phenomenon derives its name from its apparent similarity to the phalanges bones of the American moose. It relates also to the more widely celebrated "camel toe" phenomenon (though the taxonomic connection is vague at best: camels and moose come from two entirely different suborders--Tylopoda and Ruminantia, respectively--of Order Artiodactyla. What a gaffe!)

Since Europeans use "Elk" and not "moose" to refer to the relevant genuses, it speaks to the true thought-transforming power of globalization, as well as to Gill's immersion in American culture, that he uses "moose knuckle" instead of "elk knuckle" to describe a suffocating nutsack. Don't be surprised if William Safire has a thing or two to say about the affair in his "On Language" column in the New York Times Magazine.

The Eventual Gander: Double Feature

Over the span of eight hours this weekend I saw two films: The Last King of Scotland and Zodiac. A few notes.

The Last King of Scotland: Overall a decent film. It manages to achieve the kind of rock'n'roll pacing of a McG venture* and the 360-degree grit of a Tony Scott flick without descending into gonzo garishness or cinemagraphic circle jerk (of course, it's hard to be blinded by the bling when you're filming in Uganda). Anyway, I said it was a decent film. But Forrest Whitaker's performance as Idi Amin will nevertheless gaurantee its permanence. For once, the buzz was right. Whitaker deserves not only this year's Oscar but next year's as well. His screen presence is more like screen omnipresence. He dominates every scene he's in, just as Amin himself did. Also, and this is kind of an aside. There is a 15 minute sequence involving Amin's beautiful third wife, a trio of African go-go dancers, and our young Scottish protagonist. Needless to say, my jeans have never been so uncomfortable (this even though I was unable to suspend disbelief enough to think that a 130lb Scot could please a Nubian Princess. The Scots have the endowment of the Irish and the lustiness of the English.)

Zodiac: Wonderful. It is one of the signs of great filmmaking that the audience is kept in suspense even when they know what's going to happen. I went into Zodiac knowing most of the details--including the fact that they never made a charge in the case--and was biting my nails throughout its three-hour runtime. This is Fincher at his finest, but don't expect to see Seven or Fight Club, Zodiac is a different animal. Also, it's a nice touch that Fincher cast different actors to play the Zodiac based on different witnesses accounts. My one complaint, and it's fairly minor, is that Jake Gyllenhaal couldn't be bothered to change his rugged chic wardrobe or his perfectly unkempt ski-ramp haircut for a fucking 70s period piece. What, is his image under license with the Mid-00's Heart Throb Association of America?



*I debated whether to dignify that ridiculous moniker with a reference for about a half hour

Beware the Ides of March, and the other 30 days of it as well

If you are a dedicated reader of The Enfranchised, and you aren't, then you'd know we had it out over the topic of NCAA basketball once before (though my post is the only one in the series worth reading). Still, there might be a dribble or two of piss left for the taking.

I'll first note that I am of two minds about college basketball. On the one hand, I am bothered by the entire phenomenon. Part of this is personal--after four of my roommates were evicted from our choice F Street townhouse during my sophomore year at GWU, I was shipped off to an "efficiency" (one could write an entire post about the misnomic properties of this appellation) apartment in the very same dormitory that housed our illustrious Men's basketball team: The GWU Fighting Colonials. I quickly found them to be loud (quiet hours don't apply when nobody on the floor studies), spoilt (they all seemed to drive SUVs and imports when most others walked, and to have Playstation N's in their rooms when few others had even Playstation N-1's), and lecherous (it quickly became a tedium to have to break the news to them that my girlfriend was just that. The poor girl is Latin and voluptuous (not in the euphemistic way) and so attracts more black men than the subject of a hypothetical stereotype that won't get me in trouble with the NAACP).

On the other hand, when those selfsame Colonials fought their way into the top 20, and then the top 10, I became something of a born-again bandwagoner. I was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Colonial Army, and thought it the personal duty of every student and faculty at GW to make sure these boys had all the Powerade, pep, and pussy they needed to assure a good seed in the Tourney. But when starting Center Pops Mensah-Bonsu [sic] and company failed to lead the team into the sweet 16, I was crestfallen. They hadn’t even lost to some distinguished team like Oxford or The University of Chicago, but rather to a regional school in some North Carolina backwater (Earl University, maybe, it was Marquis or Baron U. It bore the name of some viceroy, of that much I’m sure).

So I did what any good sports fan would do if once-disappointed by his hometown heroes – I formed summary judgments about the intrinsic worth of the entire enterprise. So why worry at all about the mechanics of the tournament? Why not forget basketball altogether and have the respective team-members see who can construct a vaguer and more ridiculous major (Rural Sociology, anyone?) to appease those nettlesome academic-types who are always interfering with university athletics? I’m fairly sure GW could still compete at that.

That, or eliminate the automatic Ivy bid, distribute automatic bids by regions instead of conferences, recalibrate the S-Curve accordingly, and publicly clarify the role of Ratings Percentage Index.

Either way.

Pissing In The Wind: This Bracket Racket

This Sunday, the NCAA announces its field of 65.

That is, of course, an odd number. And as much as it isn't even, it's even less a power of 2, as tournament rosters are wont to be. This irregularity descends from a historical quirk. In every tournament, there are the 31 automatic bids and the 34 at-large bids.

The automatic bids go to the winners of the separate conferences. There used to be 30 conferences, but the august Mountain West Conference split from the athletic pantheon of the Western Athletic Conference, and in its infinite wisdom the NCAA decided both were, in fact, real conferences and both deserve automatic bids.

And then there are the at-large bids, or, as they're also known, the "Good Teams". You want to see Duke in the tournament? Of course you do, cause Coach K is K-k-k-krazy! And who wouldn't want to see UNC. Or Maryland. Or Boston College. Let's not forget Wake Forest's Demon Deacons, a team name up there with Pennsylvania's Fighting Quakers for absurdity. Of course, because all these teams come from the ACC, most of these great teams are coming from an at-large bid.

So why even bother with the automatic bids that are just warm-up for the teams that have been spending the regular seasons kicking ass and taking names?

And while we're at it, what is the deal with those conference tournaments at all? Let's say there is a team from the Podunk Regional Conference that is good. Not great, certainly not a top 25 team, though maybe it's gotten some votes. They work their ass off to establish a solid record, get to the Charles Willamon (he was the first athletic director at East Bumblefuck University) Tournament, and lo and behold, there are actually cameras there! They're going to be on TV! And they lose! And even though they're obviously the "best" team in the 'Dunk.

This is all done, of course, because those fancy-shmancy TV cameras give the 'Dunk teams hell of money. At the cost of, y'know, screwing over their best child.

So, dear commentatrices, what's the way to deal with basketball championships?

Harvard sucks at basketball; Dinosaurs still dead

Harvard decided not to renew their coach after a 12-16 season. At, say, Duke, that would be a disastrous season. Coach K would be roasted alive and the Cameron Crazies would become the Cameron Cannibals. But Frank Sullivan, the coach, had an overall record of 178-245 in 16 seasons at Cambridge Community College. So, in fact, this year's .428 percentage was .8 percent *better* than his career .420 winning record.

How mercurial, dear Ivy League Bastion. Perhaps the Ivory Tower wants to get in on the game? Recruit noted intellectual players like J, Ph.D.? You get down with your bad self, Stanford of the East.

So how long has it been since they made the big dance? Will next year's seniors be able to gather round the campfire and tell the freshmen stories of NCAA tournament shenanigans? Maybe the red-shirted seniors? Let me get on my reading glasses, and peruse this article... It says that the last time the Crimson made the bracket was.. two thousand and-- Where is that?

"Harvard last made the NCAA Tournament in 1946."

1946?!

That's right. People who saw the Harvard team last ball it up weren't grindin', they were jitterbuggin'. Diplomats from the LEAGUE OF NATIONS watched the game (possibly). India was part of Britain. Bobby Bonds, father of today's elder statesmen of steroid question dodging, Barry Bonds was born. But hey, at least maybe some of the players were scouted for the League? Y'know, go pro?

Oh, wait, no. The NBA wasn't founded for another couple months.

So Harvard, here's my suggestion: Don't form a search committee for a new coach. Why bother? Instead, just let the intramural basketball team currently leading in the standings play for you at the Div I level. That way, you save some money, more kids get to experience the rush of competition, and it's not like you'll do much worse.

Maureen Dowd's Career And Other Cunning Stunts

Sports analogies are illuminating in a piece of writing when they recast complex phenomena--like the Democratic Primary--in the more immediately recognizable terms of positions and objectives, raw talent and charisma, the value of teamwork versus individual achievement, , underdogs and favorites, triumph over adversity, et cetera.

Maureen Dowd's latest op-ed gem, "Where Is His Right Hook?" manages to take a fairly common and straightforward species of sports analogy--'politics is like a prize fight' (or a wrestling match, or a dogfight...)--and make it almost completely incoherent.

A good rule of thumb in journalism (even op-eds) is that the headline, the lede, and the pull-quote should give the reader a fairly good idea what the article is about. In this case, the aforementioned headline set up the following lede:

"If Hillary is in touch with her masculine side, Obama is in touch with his feminine side."

and the pull-quote was....Well, I don't know exactly what the pull-quote was, because I threw away my copy and nytimes.com wants me to pay to read it again.* I'm fairly sure the pull quote said something like "he rolls over while she takes another shot", which is not only ambiguous across about a thousand contexts that the Times would no doubt find "unfit to print", but also brings the pronoun-to-noun ratio in the headline, lede and pull-quote up to 5:2.

Like I said, I can't be sure this was the exact wording of the pull-quote. It might have been a reference to Sex and the City--one can never be sure.

Her writing (and I use that term charitably) invariably seems like it comes straight from her adorable little diary in which she confides her deepest, darkest secrets along with notes about super-hottie Centrists, Third-Wave feminism, and bulk makeup orders.


*though, becoming a member of "Times Select" would allow me to root through their Op-Ed archives and reconstruct just how John Tierney managed to make Libertarianism fit on a postage stamp

March Madness

Stereotypes are idioms, and idioms sure can be useful. For instance, this weekend when I met a women's rugby player, I filed away that fact and all its connotations. And so when she mentioned she was Dutch, I was able to say with nary a pause, "ah, then it makes sense that you want to stick fingers in dikes."

Speaking of, it's March. To some of my friends who are interested in walking a mile in the other guy's shoes (and pants), that means it's March Manness[sic]. But for us here at The Enfranchised, it means it's time for basketball.

(For those of you a bit confused about my introduction and segue, allow me to quote Aristotle. In Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, Ch. 7 Eth.1098a23-24, we find, "What is the difference between cunnilingus and dunking? You don't have to dunk to play woman's basketball." A bit awkward phrasing, yes. But remember that comedic timing was discovered at the same time as perspective in 2-D art, only in the Renaissance.)

And so, this month, we're getting into it. Sports sports sports here at the 'Franchised. College, Pro, PAL, men's, women's unisex, hot horse-on-horse action (if we find horses that play polo, y'know, on other horses. Come to think of it, that's Foster's assignment). You name it, we'll consider considering it.