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October 29, 2003What *would* we do without internet journalism?
When I logged onto the internet this morning before class, I pulled up the MSN homepage, only to find the following as one of the top headlines:
"Space storm hits; Earth survives"
Let me tell you, if it weren't for the fine folks of MSNBC News and their tireless crusade to keep me informed, I might have gone the rest of the day thinking that everything and everyone I'd ever known had been obliterated by a solar super-flare sometime last night. Keep up the good work, fellas!
In other news, and I'm not making this up, "An organisation in Israel has gained rabbinical approval to train pigs to guard Jewish settlements in the West Bank."
Still think I'm lying? Click here and tell me you're sorry for having doubted me.
Posted by patrick at 08:24 PM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2003
Promised photos, much overdue...
I've been meaning to upload a few images, having said in earlier journal entries that I would.
First, a few images of the huge can of pickled jalapeno slices that one of our lucky mullet contest participants will win.
Second, a picture of me from "Simpatico," a show at UCR in 1999 for which I wore a fat suit and had my head shaved to emulate male-pattern baldness. That's the Ghost of Patrick Future, folks--equal parts Ben Franklin and Jiminy Glick. Frightening, I know.
Posted by patrick at 10:12 PM | Comments (2)
October 26, 2003
Those who don't learn from the past are condemned to work for Nissan...
Marketing snafus based on unintended translations are nothing new. I’d heard the yarn about how the Chevy Nova had bombed in Spanish-speaking countries. Nobody was too interested in a car whose very name said it "no va," or wouldn’t go. Just recently, the Buick LaCrosse was rethought for the Canadian market after it became known that “lacrosse” is a masturbatory term among the youth of Quebec. This website has a list of various examples, not all of which concern cars, and many of which are highly entertaining. My personal favorite was the Taiwanese translation of "Come alive with the Pepsi generation!"
"Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead!"
The latest marketing snafu isn’t so much an unfortunate translation as much as it highlights the ignorance of the marketing guys at Nissan and the general American public. They’ve just unveiled a new SUV—the Nissan Pathfinder Armada.
That’s all well and good for Nissan, but I can’t help but wonder how the public will receive it. For the moment, let’s ignore the contradiction of naming a single SUV with the Spanish word for "fleet"—we’ve bigger fish to fry with regard to negative connotations. Frankly, the word "armada" isn’t teeming with them.
The best-known example of an armada is the Spanish Armada of 1588. King Philip II of Spain decided that Protestant England needed a religious spring cleaning and figured that he’d put down the smack on the home island with some 130 or so ships and about 30,000 men. Their ships were second-rate and their men ill-prepared; many of them were soldiers, not sailors, and utterly unaccustomed to sea life. When they finally reached England, the defenders handed them their collective Spanish butts on a platter, at which point the survivors (about 60 ships and 15,000 men—half of the armada’s original tally) limped home. Four million ducats later, the Spanish had nothing to show for their treasury-crippling investment. The English funded their successful defense on one one-hundredth of that amount. Spanish handed over its naval dominance to the English who, emboldened by their victory and Spain’s self-inflicted wounds, pursued their own colonial agenda with a new vigor.
But don’t let me dissuade you. If you want to end up demoralized and broke while the neighbor you hate gets a promotion at work, the 2004 Nissan Pathfinder Armada is the vehicle for you!
Posted by patrick at 03:46 AM | Comments (3)
October 23, 2003
Come on, man--at least cheat smartly!
For your consideration, the first three lines out of an article in today’s Boston Herald:
“The Lawrence school superintendent who failed an English test his teachers had to take is off the hook. Superintendent Wilfredo T. Laboy finally passed the Communication and Literacy Skills Test, reportedly with flying colors. Laboy told Lawrence Mayor Michael J. Sullivan by phone Monday that he received a 100 percent passing grade on the written portion of the test that had given him so much trouble in his previous three tries.”
Curious, that. He failed the test the first three times, and aced it on the fourth try? You’ll have to forgive my skepticism.
I had a student one year who managed an 85% on the semester final. As that number was between four and five times higher than his quiz/test average hitherto that moment, I was a little concerned. My concern only grew when his score and individual answers matched those of the girl who had been sitting next to him. I couldn’t discount the exam, as I hadn’t acted on my cheating hunches during the test, but the student’s grade still wasn’t high enough to pass.
My former student’s cheating ultimately didn’t do him any good, but Superintendent Laboy profits much from this inexplicably sudden and supreme command of English—he gets to keep his job (a job that has included, one should know, putting teachers who failed the same exact test on unpaid leave while his failing butt kept drawing a salary). It all seems mighty peculiar…
Posted by patrick at 02:30 AM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2003
In your face, AP!
Here's an article on Yahoo! about "earworms," the songs that get stuck in your head against your will.
Here's my journal entry from when I first realized there was a word for such a thing.
I had the Associated Press beat by just over three months. I don't know why this pleases me, exactly, but it does.
Posted by patrick at 11:44 PM | Comments (1)
October 19, 2003
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
My girlfriend and I walked out of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" last night with about half the film to go. She suggested we leave once she noticed that I was averting my eyes for many of the scenes. I was watching her face during the worst of it, and based on the look I saw there, I wasn't missing a thing.
Roger Ebert and I don't always see eye-to-eye on movies, but I think his review of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was right on the money.
"The new version of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is a contemptible film: Vile, ugly and brutal. There is not a shred of a reason to see it."
"There is no worthy or defensible purpose in sight here: The filmmakers want to cause disgust and hopelessness in the audience."
"I like good horror movies. They can exorcise our demons. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" doesn't want to exorcise anything. It wants to tramp crap through our imaginations and wipe its feet on our dreams."
Perhaps more unsettling than the film itself is the fact that screenings of it were selling out as late as 10:55 last night (the screening I partially attended), and it topped the box office this weekend. A friend of mine from school whom Hope and I randomly encountered in the CinemaStar parking lot, equally disgusted by the film, said that he overheard a conversation between two girls who had already seen the movie once and were back for more. To not know what you're getting yourself into is one matter. I was guilty enough of that, although I fled as soon as I realized just how disturbing "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" would prove. But to go back, knowing exactly what sort of abattoir tour you're in for? Indefensible.
Posted by patrick at 09:46 PM | Comments (1)
October 14, 2003
I'm back!
I’ve not been terribly diligent about updating this journal lately, and my numbers for the month of October reflect that. Last month, I had 824 visits and 435 unique visitors. Actually, except for a freakishly well-attended April that left May looking anemic by comparison, my visits/visitors statistics have been rising each month without fail since this site’s inception.
Time to catch up, dammit!
Let’s see…where to begin? Whether as an act of intended irony or a simple mistake (all the more ironic), I received Metallica stickers and an application for the Metallica Club in yesterday’s mail. My only previous experience with the Metallica club was the e-mail I sent them about Metallica suing for chord copyright infringement before I knew it was an Unfaith hoax. I’m going to put my Metallica Club stickers on my file cabinet o’ ironies. Among other oddities, it already features two promotional stickers of defunct internet start-ups (iam.com and Kozmo.com, respectively) and a John McCain campaign sticker, circa 2000. I think my new stickers will fit in just fine.
I completed a PowerPoint spirit journey this afternoon. This maiden voyage into the Microsoft Office unknown started late Thursday night, and occupied a goodly chunk of my time each day since. I put together a presentation comparing Heian-era Japanese spirit possession with modern karaoke. I probably put way too much work into it, but I think I’m pretty pleased with the final result. Having weathered this particular storm, I may screw up the courage to take a second stab at Flash. My friend James tried to teach me Flash about five years ago, and it spanked me like an unruly tot in a Romanian orphanage—y’know, the orphanages where they don’t actually interact with the kids at all. You have to be bad to get a spanking in a place like that…
But I digress. James couldn’t teach me Flash, although it was no fault of his. My brain couldn’t handle the details. I’d forget some piddling command, and the whole thing would fall to pieces. I’m much more comfortable with words and essays, where I can twist the language to serve my purpose, no matter how outlandish of an opinion I must defend. James tried to teach me how to drive a manual transmission car, too. That also didn’t work out. I’ve had about five people try and teach me that, and nobody’s been able to do it. My feelings on stickshift cars are very Animal Farm: “Two pedals good, three pedals bad.”
In a very good piece of news, my girlfriend finally got her teaching job with LAUSD. The runaround they gave her was obscene. You’d think they were doing her a favor by hiring her, that there was no crisis in education and they were full up on good teachers. Fill out this form. Fill out that form. Oh, whoops—we gave you the wrong form, so you’ll have to start over. Take this here. Bring it back. Oh, whoops—we seem to have lost your file. Take this test. Take it again. Running out of money? Not our problem. You completed requirements X through Z? Great, but forms A and B just expired—start over again. I was waiting for them to ask her to retrieve the pieces of the Triforce or save Princess Toadstool. Hope’s life was just one huge game of “Super Mario Brothers,” minus the power-ups and coins. There were days when I wanted nothing more than to drive down to their office, pull the jawbone off the face of some theory-only sycophant and start raising some hell a la Samson. Sadly enough, as a local, Hope was one of the lucky ones. Many people not only quit their job but moved a considerable distance to take part in the L.A. Teaching Fellows program that painted LAUSD as such a land of employment milk and honey in the first place. The program is newly defunct, having had its funding guillotined by LAUSD, and many of the program’s participants are now left without a pot to piss in. It reminds me of the Children’s Crusade—“Hey, the survivors of our arduous walk across Europe finally reached the shore, but the sea didn’t part like they said it would. Wait…these ship owners seem nice enough. You’ll take us there for free? Hooray! Wait—we’re being sold into white slavery. Man, this sucks!”
On a totally unrelated note, I saw “House of the Dead” tonight. I went into it knowing it was going to be bad, but I was still surprised at thoroughly and completely a director could piss away millions of dollars with nary a redeeming moment. The plot was absent, the acting flat, the effects derivative and bland, and the banality of the dialogue made my ears want to recess into my head. Even the nudity was desperate. The movie tossed topless girl after topless girl onto the screen in the early part of the movie, as if trying to apologize in advance for what we’d have to sit through. It didn’t work. Director Uwe Boll thought it sure would be nifty to use footage from the video game itself as a cut-scene graphic. But after a while, he wasn’t bothering to wait for scene transitions—he’d just toss it in there willy-nilly. During the trailers, I was wishing the obnoxious frat boys in the row behind me would shut up. By the end of “House of the Dead,” I was grateful for their commentary. Without it and the screening of the “Matrix Revolutions” trailer before the film, there wouldn’t have been anything to enjoy.
It’s 3:11 a.m. right now, so I should probably wrap this up. I have to get up around 9 a.m. this morning, if I intend to sleep at all, and I have some homework reading to knock out before I call it a night. Yea, methinks tomorrow will pain me most mightily…
Posted by patrick at 03:15 AM | Comments (0)
October 09, 2003
You really put the "eat" in "meat"...
Consider the following…
Name of creature: Chicken
Food made of said creature: Chicken
Name of creature: Fish
Food made of said creature: Fish
Name of creature: Cow
Food made of said creature: Beef
Name of creature: Lamb
Food made of said creature: Mutton
Name of creature: Pig
Food made of said creature: Pork
It wouldn’t be at all unusual for somebody to order a chicken sandwich or some chicken Parmesan, but when’s the last time you heard somebody ask the deli for a pound of ground cow, or half a dozen pig chops? What gives? On some subtle, semantic level, are we queasy about eating fellow mammals?
Posted by patrick at 08:01 PM | Comments (4)
Back in the director's chair...
After acting in two shows back-to-back, I figured I’d take a break from theater. The rational sliver of my brain suggested that I at least not get involved in any other shows until I’ve had a chance to the rigors of graduate school. Life reminded me that, in many ways, taking a break from theater is like taking a break from the Mafia—it just doesn’t happen.
I got a call a few weeks back from Steve Sabel, who asked me to direct “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for Notre Dame. I agreed readily, as directing opportunities don’t fall into your lap every day.
This will be my third time directing, and I imagine this only gets easier with experience. The script for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is much shorter than that of “Hamlet” (which was immense, even after we pruned it mercilessly and trimmed all spare fat). What’s more, since the characters in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” aren’t trying to litter the stage with the corpses of their foes, I don’t have to hold my breath night after night as adrenaline-fueled teenagers try to convince audiences that they’ve skewered each other without actually doing it. I loved directing “Hamlet,” don’t get me wrong, but it was a monumental undertaking.
The show runs the last weekend of January, but I’ll put up specifics once we’ve actually reached the same calendar year.
Posted by patrick at 07:51 PM | Comments (0)