Movie connections, part 2a

I’ve mentioned before how, years ago, I created a series of interesting movie-trivia puzzles for my colleagues on the IMDb, puzzles that couldn’t be solved using the IMDb. I posted one of them here and have intended (and still do) to post others. What I didn’t expect was to create new ones, but that’s just what happened yesterday afternoon, so without further ado, here it is:

There’s an actor who, in one film, played the badass leader of a hardcore military team obliged to drag along a bespectacled Ph.D. with mission-critical knowledge. The same actor, in another film two years later, was himself the bespectacled Ph.D. with mission-critical knowledge dragged along on a mission with a team of military badasses. Who is it, and what are the films?

Since this puzzle is new, I’m not going to include the answer here. I’ll post it in a week or so.

Not Robert Culp!

Robert Culp, who died yesterday at 79, was one of my favorite minor actors. I was already a fan thanks to his distinctive delivery as Bill Maxwell in The Greatest American Hero when I discovered reruns of I Spy in college, and just in time too. I had soured on the juvenile humor and the self-parody in most of the James Bond films and was looking for someone new to teach me how to be cool. Culp’s Kelly Robinson was just the one.

I could go on and on, but the blogosphere is already full of encomiums about his wit, wisdom, and talent. I do want to mention, though, that among his many other achievements and memorable performances, he has the distinction of having given the best reading of the line “Oh shit!” in film history.

In Turk 182!, he plays fictional New York City mayor John Tyler, who is touting his “Polish the Big Apple” program for eliminating graffiti. Timothy Hutton plays a kid with a private grievance against the mayor that he takes public by defacing city property in increasingly daring and entertaining ways. Here’s what happens when the mayor tries to unveil one of his administration’s new “graffiti-proof” subway trains.

Greatest hits: Movies for kids

Many months ago, on the internal “parents” mailing list at work, someone asked for “movies that a 3 year old could watch that are also fun for the parents.” I wrote the following, which elicited from one list member the gratifying response, “This has to be the coolest kids’ movies list I’ve ever seen.”

Some recommendations in addition to the usual Disney/Pixar/HBO-Family stuff:

Animals Are Beautiful People
Remember the narrated documentary bits from The Gods Must Be Crazy about flora, fauna, and tribal life in the Kalahari desert? This is a whole movie of just that (by the same narrator and filmmakers), humorous in many places and a minimum of nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw.
Apollo 13
If you skip the preliminaries and go straight to the blast-off, and keep your child informed about what’s happening in the story and that it all happened in real life, it’s great.
Batman (1966)
A ton of fun, if you don’t mind your 3-year-old watching cartoonish fistfights.
Benji
Some small kids will be frightened by the peril of the (spoiler) kidnaped children, but you can assure them that (spoiler) it all turns out OK.
Chicken Run
From the Wallace and Gromit folks.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Clearly some of the filmmakers behind Mary Poppins were trying to reproduce that film’s success, and missed — but not by too much.
The Court Jester
Plenty of great Danny Kaye silliness if you don’t mind the (cartoonish) sword-fighting and jousting.
Curious George (the Ron Howard movie)
Much maligned by Curious George purists, but we love it.
A Hard Day’s Night
You can’t start ’em on Beatles fandom too early.
The Muppet Movie
When your kids O.D. on typical inane children’s programming, show them this as an antidote.
The Music Man
Teach your kids to lithp along with little Ronnie Howard — fun! Then tell them he grew up to make two of the other movies in this list and blow their minds.
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure
Apart from its numerous other charms, it includes a play on the word but/butt. Three-year-old gold.
A Pocketful of Miracles
Actually most of this one will probably bore your three-year-old, but it’s a Christmas tradition at our house and my kids seem to tolerate it well enough.
School of Rock
Like all other parents, I’m hoping to get a couple of musicians out of the deal.
Silent Movie
You’ll have to read the title cards for them, and (if you’re like me) edit out the running “Fags!” gag.
Singin’ in the Rain
If your kid isn’t red-faced with laughter after “Make ’em Laugh,” consult your pediatrician.
Star Trek: the animated series
Not-half-bad kid-oriented sci-fi stories from the 70’s with the original cast doing voices and plenty of respect for science, alien races, etc.
What’s Up, Doc?
Very young kids will of course get a lot less out of this than older ones, but they still get plenty. This one’s in frequent rotation at Casa Glickstein.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Pure magic. And for the record, I love Johnny Depp, but he can’t hold a candle to Gene Wilder.
Yellow Submarine
The Blue Meanie invasion of Pepperland is a little much, especially if you’re a gun-averse parent. But see “can’t start ’em on Beatles fandom too early” above.

Please please you

Some time ago I was talking with a friend who was having woman trouble. “I can’t figure out how to make her happy,” he said. Immediately he added the disclaimer, “I know, I know, ‘everyone’s responsible for their own happiness.’”

That’s a bit of pop psychology from the Me generation that has passed into conventional wisdom, but I think it’s wrong. It’s just one step from there to “Greed is good,” and you know how I feel about that one.

So I said, “That’s bullshit. When I married Andrea, I made her happiness my job.” Not that she didn’t bear some of the responsibility herself, of course; nor was I abandoning my happiness for hers. But I’ll be damned if our marriage doesn’t mean that she gets my help being happy when she needs it, and vice versa. My friend’s palpable gratitude at hearing someone explode the old chestnut told me I was onto something.

Not to get too crunchy-granola, but how would the world be different if the conventional wisdom said, instead, “Everyone is responsible for each other’s happiness”?

Hello ladies

The last TV commercial that made me run right out and buy the product was for Squirmles. It was the 70’s. I was eight. I had only recently started earning an allowance. I had never had a pet and the commercial made Squirmles look like a magical pet. I had to have it!

Within seconds after getting it home and opening the package I realized that what I’d just shelled out for was a piece of fuzz on the end of a string, with two paper eyes glued on — badly. In minutes the eyes were gone. In a few days, so was the fuzz. And during that time, its movements were not magical. They were, in fact, exactly like the movements you’d expect from a piece of fuzz on the end of a string.

Worst buck and a half I ever spent. Lesson learned: marketing is lies.

As I said, that was the last TV commercial to make me run right out and buy the product — until now.

This morning I followed these directions on the bottle:

and now look!

Thermody-nom-ics

Imagine a car rolling down the highway at a constant speed. Now imagine a refueling truck keeping pace with that car and adding a constant trickle of gas to the car’s tank, so that the level in the tank neither falls nor rises.

Now imagine that the driver of the car presses harder on the accelerator, and the car speeds up. The refueling truck speeds up too to stay with the car, but the trickle of gas stays the same — it doesn’t increase to compensate for the faster-running engine.

According to common sense — and the laws of thermodynamics — the level of fuel in the tank must now begin to drop. Right? Right?

Well, I’m now in week four of vigorous exercise almost every damn day, and the pounds are not coming off. I weigh exactly as much as I did when I started. My eating habits are the same as before, and my level of physical activity is notably higher. If I could build a car that worked like me, the world’s fossil fuel woes would be over.

In the past I’ve announced my weight-loss efforts on this blog as way to compel myself to stick with them (reasoning that I wouldn’t be able to let my millions of loyal readers down, natch). This time I kept it quiet, hoping for more success than in other recent attempts, so as to have a little momentum going when I broke the news here. Happily, sticking with my new fitness regime no longer seems to be the main challenge. Unhappily, the effect of all that exercise seems to be nothing other than an increase in the efficiency with which I metabolize my food intake. I have no choice but to change my eating habits. Let’s see if that does anything, or if I continue to defy the laws of nature.

Phase one: eliminating sweets for two weeks. This better work.

All Cretans are liars

The other day Archer asked me to hold up my hand, fingers out. I did. He then began asking me yes/no questions, one per finger. A “no” answer meant that the finger got folded down, a “yes” answer meant it stayed up. Of course this was a brand new trick from the schoolyard with which he was trying to get me involuntarily to give him “the finger,” but between its newness, Archer’s confusion about how to execute it, and my own teasing efforts to sabotage the result, it took a lot more than five questions to reach the hilarious goal. But reach it we did, at which point Archer erupted into merriment. “You’re making a rude gesture!” he laughed, as if we hadn’t both known it was coming. “Now do it to me.”

Well, I didn’t want to disappoint him, but I also didn’t want to see my little boy flipping me the bird. He held up his hand and I pointed to his pinky. “Are you green?” I asked. “No.” Down went the pinky. “Do you eat shoes?” “No.” Down went his ring finger. “Are you very silly?” “Yes!” Up stayed the middle finger. “Do you like mashed potatoes?” “No.” Down went the index finger.

Now his middle finger and thumb remained pointing up. A big smile spread across his face as he thought he knew what was coming next.

I pointed to his thumb. “Should you put your thumb down?” I asked. “Yes!” he said at once. “Ah, that means it stays up!” I pointed out. So he recanted: “No!” “Ah, then I don’t want to make you do something you don’t want to do.” “Wait… yes! Um…”

I blew his little mind.

Elbows deep

Last week I replaced my six-year-old home server (which serves this website among many other functions) with a newer, faster, quieter computer. Transferring all the data and functions was a considerable effort in system administration. For the record, here are the steps I had to take.

  1. Download Fedora 12 install-CD image.
  2. Burn Fedora 12 install CD.
  3. Shut down sendmail and Apache.
  4. Dump MySQL database contents.
  5. Dump Postgresql database contents.
  6. Bring up new computer with temporary hostname.
  7. Install Fedora 12 on new computer.
  8. Create user accounts.
  9. Copy all data from old computer to new, under /old tree.
  10. Shut down old computer (permanently).
  11. Take over old computer’s hostname and IP address.
  12. Restore firewall config from /old.
  13. Restore DNS config from /old, bring up DNS.
  14. Restore sshd config from /old, bring up sshd.
  15. Restore Maildir trees from /old.
  16. Restore IMAP server config from /old, bring up IMAP server.
  17. Restore sendmail config from /old, bring up sendmail.
  18. Restore WordPress environment from /old.
  19. Bring up MySQL, restore contents from MySQL dump.
  20. Bring up Postgresql, restore contents from Postgresql dump.
  21. Restore Apache config from /old, bring up Apache.
  22. Restore Mailman environment from /old, bring up Mailman.
  23. Bring up apcupsd.
  24. Add printer.
  25. Set up network printing.
  26. Set up NFS.
  27. Resume backups.

Naturally not everything went according to plan. So in addition to the steps above I also had to solve:

  • Why all of my domains but one could be resolved;
  • Why the firewall was getting reset at startup;
  • Why inbound mail was not flowing;
  • Why the Ethernet interface had the wrong parameters at startup;
  • Why the monitor would not go into power-save mode;
  • How to get the Flash plugin running under x86_64;
  • Why the DVD-RW drive wasn’t visible some of the time.

Throughout all this, I frequently had to pause to locate and install needed software packages and Perl modules that weren’t part of the default Fedora setup. For good measure I also had to replace an external hard drive that was about to fail. (Thanks for the warning, Palimpsest!)

Happily all these things are now done, except that the monitor issue is a bona fide bug in the xorg video driver (duly filed) that someone else will have to deal with. Until then I just have to remember to switch the monitor off when I walk away.

This may all sound like deep wizardry, but it doesn’t feel like it to me. Having spent a lifetime coping and communing with these sometimes-cantankerous machines, it’s just busywork. Then I think of the number of other people in the world who could do all of this single-handedly and I become impressed with myself.