Movie connections, part 1

Years ago I was a founding member of the Internet Movie Database. The other team members and I were distributed around the globe. We coordinated our efforts by e-mail and the occasional crowded conference call. In 1999 we finally all met for the first time, gathering for a memorable weekend in L.A. At that meeting one of our geeky pastimes was to quiz one another about movies. In person, and in real-time, this was a fun challenge; but when we got back home to our computers it was too easy to take a question from e-mail and use our own database to answer it. (Today it would be even easier, with Google.)

Then one of the members hit on an interesting kind of quiz that the database could not help with: he sent sheet music snippets in e-mail and challenged us to identify which movie’s theme music it was! Brilliant. I came up with my own solution to the problem: finding connections among multiple movies involving descriptions of scenes or other unsearchable aspects that require you actually to have seen the films. For a while I challenged the team with one such question each week, and it was a popular feature while it lasted. I have since used the questions at parties, shared them with trivia buffs, and mailed them hither and yon, but never posted them here despite promises to do so; so here is the first one. The answer appears below. See if you can solve it without peeking!

Believe it or not, there’s a top Hollywood actress who, in the space of two years, was in two otherwise unrelated major films in which her male costar’s lower jaw fell off! Who is she, and what are the films?

Here’s a hint if you need it:

show

The answer is:

show

When I posed this question to the denizens of Ken Jennings’ site, one of them reported that it’s now easy to answer this one “from scratch” via Google. Oh well. I’ll post a hard one next.

The Arbitration Fairness Act

Here’s some unexpected good news: the Arbitration Fairness Act has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.

As I wrote last September, the mandatory binding arbitration clauses that are ubiquitous in the service contracts we sign are “as un-American a practice as I can imagine” because they deny you your day in court should you have a grievance. It’s a measure of how well the monied interests have us brainwashed that most of us think this is a good thing — there are too many frivolous lawsuits and too many lawyers getting rich, driving up the prices of everything, right? Wrong. That’s just what they want you to think.

So most of us think mandatory binding arbitration clauses are no big deal, if we ever think about them at all, and hardly any of us do, even though we agree to them almost every time we enter a professional relationship with someone: a doctor, a landlord, an employer. Which is why it’s such a surprise to see opposition to this practice getting a little traction in Congress — in these days of global megacrisis piled atop global megacrisis, the phrase “mandatory binding arbitration” isn’t exactly spilling from everyone’s lips.

So extra kudos to the sponsor of the bill, U.S. Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia’s fourth congressional district, for doing what’s right even when all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room. Let’s show him some love in the form of a token contribution to his campaign fund.

Séance

Beeeeep.

Hi, it’s me! Pick up the phone, please!

Beeeeep.

Hiya, son!

Hi, Mom! How are you?

I’m good, how are you?

I’m OK. I have some exciting news for you.

Oh, OK! What?

We finally used the sled!

The sled?

Yeah, the sled. You know — the Centennial Edition Flexible Flyer you once gave me.

I gave you a sled?

Yeah, don’t you remember? It was a really big deal. You used to keep asking me whether I had used it yet.

Ohh, yeah, I remember. That was a long time ago!

Yeah! Twenty years. You sent me that sled in Pittsburgh.

Twenty years you didn’t use the sled?

What can I say? We tried a few times but this was the first real opportunity we had.

I can’t believe that in twenty years you never had a chance to use the sled.

Well, keep in mind where I’ve been living for seventeen of those years. We got one millimeter of snow one day in seventeen years, and no one could believe it.

So where did you use it?

We took the kids to Tahoe. I wish you could have seen them. They loved the snow, and the sled works great! In fact it works a little too well — it goes fast, and it was a little scary!

For you, or for the boys?

Oh for me, definitely. The kids were fearless.

I can’t picture you scared on a sled.

Of course you can’t. The last time you saw me on a sled I was a fearless kid, like Jonah and Archer. It takes a grownup to be scared. Anyway, it was only scary until I figured out how well it steers, and how soft the snow is when you wipe out. It was hilarious — Archer was riding with me and we wiped out together, a couple of times, and each time he got out from under me and stood up and said, “Awesome!”

“Centennial Edition Flexible Flyer” — that must be worth something by now.

Yeah, probably. That’s part of the reason we’ve schlepped it around for twenty years.

If you keep it in good condition, maybe you can sell it for some nice bucks when the boys grow up.

Pshaw. I don’t want to worry about keeping it in good condition, I want to use it. It can’t possibly be worth more than the fun we have using it!

That’s the right attitude. I want to see pictures.

You will.

 

Be the envy of your peers

A few days ago, my friend and former colleague, the funny and talented Greg Bulmash, visited my blog after a prolonged absence. There he saw my latest What brings you here post and grew curious about vampire lesbian girl scouts.

If I say so myself, the phrase “vampire lesbian girl scouts” all but demands further exploration.

Anyway, he wrote about it on his own blog in what he claimed, in e-mail to me, was an innocent shout-out. But I know what was really going on: he wanted to muscle in on some of that “vampire lesbian girl scout” search traffic. Indeed, as of this moment his post has taken over the top spot from mine in a Google search for that phrase.

The war is on. And this post is my escalation. Presenting the geebobg Vampire Lesbian Girl Scouts t-shirt!

Available in men’s and women’s styles and a variety of colors in the geebobg CafePress store.

While you’re there, pick up a Mucoshave coffee mug for that special someone!

A much better George W.

Speaking of presidential inaugurations, it was only a few days ago that we were deeply moved by watching America’s latest one; and then last night we watched the very first one — that of George Washington, also very movingly staged, in the HBO miniseries John Adams.

The kids have been clamoring to watch each new episode of this enriching and educational show, which we pause often for discussion. They love it! How lucky am I?

Once in a lifetime

This morning we woke up a little earlier than usual. I sent e-mail to Jonah’s teacher saying he’d be late to school. We ate breakfast, piled into the car, and drove to 142 Throckmorton, a theater in downtown Mill Valley. The sky was blue and the bright sunshine made it too warm for the jackets we wore. Inside the theater were old hippies, young families, and teens gathered to eat pastries, drink coffee, and watch Barack Obama take the oath of office. On the screen at the front of the theater, C-SPAN showed the activity on the steps of the Capitol and the throngs packed onto the National Mall. The crowd cheered for Bill Clinton and booed for Bush and Cheney. We took our seats, Jonah on my lap, Archer and Andrea beside me. Obama appeared and the kids began to cheer without any prompting. The audience rose to its feet for the first of several times. We watched the ceremonious proceedings with our arms around one another, exchanging frequent smiles. Andrea and I cried. Obama was sworn in; the place erupted with jubilation. He delivered his speech. The kids asked questions; we explained. Many times, a phrase spoken by Obama was answered with a heartfelt “Yeah!” from one person or another in our audience. “We will restore science” — huge cheers. “We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals” — huge cheers. Afterward: catharsis, hugging, strangers congratulating one another, and as we filed out, an impromptu drum circle on the street.

It meant more to me than I can express to watch this inauguration with my sons in my embrace, all of us appreciating the historic importance of the occasion. It is for them, after all, and for their adorable counterparts Malia and Sasha, that President Obama and I must fix America.

Failure? Oh yeah: not an option

Today newspapers and blogs are full of praise for Chesley Sullenberger, pilot of US Airways flight 1549, and his crew, and the rescuers who saved every life aboard that plane when it ditched in the Hudson yesterday. And rightly so: Captain Sullenberger had just moments to make a difficult decision, and he made the right one; and then he executed a flawless water landing while superb coordination of resources on the ground meant that several watercraft were almost immediately on hand to pluck the survivors from the icy river. Kudos all around; a tickertape parade would not, in my opinion, be unjustified.

But if all the lionization today and the talk about heroism and miracles seems a little too breathless, I blame — who else? — George Bush. This impressive display of can-do professionalism comes in the final hours of an eight-year interregnum marked primarily by no-can-do incompetence.

You couldn’t ask for a more vivid way to throw the past eight years into sharper relief. America, we were always taught, was the land where an abundance of know-how and elbow grease could defeat the Axis, put a man on the moon, create a succession of world-changing technologies, and be a beacon of justice, progress, and courage for the whole human race. Yet for most of this past decade we’ve witnessed fear dominating our policymaking, the loss of a major American city through neglect, the destruction of our present and much of our future wealth (and the crippling of our very system for generating new wealth), stagnation in the sciences, official disregard for the law, our international alliances in tatters, an assortment of ecological crises growing more severe and numerous by the week, two disastrously mismanaged wars, an avalanche of doublespeak, and a much, much longer litany of abuses and failures than I can bear to put down here but which you can find enumerated in many essays and articles this week reflecting on the exit of the Bush administration. Bush used his farewell address to the nation to make petulant excuses for why things weren’t better under his watch.

That’s not America.

America is where a seasoned pro with a cool hand on the controls can set his disabled jumbo jet in the water and be met by dozens more seasoned pros with a plenitude of training and equipment to rescue passengers who were marshaled out of the sinking wreckage in an orderly fashion by an equally well-trained crew of professionals.

America is where the incoming president has lined up an all-star team of experts and achievers to help him govern, instead of what we’ve grown accustomed to: cronies, patrons, figureheads, and yes-men.

In short, America is where the people are competent. It’s been so long since that was the case, we’ve all forgotten what competence looks like, so that when we see it in action like we did yesterday in the Hudson River, it takes our breath away.

Think of how routinely our parents and grandparents got to see American competence in action, and how little this generation has seen of it. We’re right to laud Captain Sullenberger and the others as heroes, but we’d be wrong to place them on a pedestal. Theirs is the ordinary heroism we should expect from any American in a position of responsibility. If we’re to learn anything from the Bush administration, it’s never to let them lower our standards. No more setting the bar low. From now on, we demand competence.

Moon type

I saw somewhere that today is the 200th birthday of Louis Braille, inventor of the Braille system of writing for the blind. As his legacy can easily withstand a little friendly competition, I figured it’s a good day to mention Moon Type, the little-known alternative to Braille.

Tell it like it is

In the same sally through the encyclopedia that uncovered Moon Type, Chuck discovered in the entry for “warthog” this caption beneath an illustration: “The warthog is one of the world’s ugliest animals.” This tickled us no end, but a year or two later when the library got an updated edition of the encyclopedia, we were even more amused to see that the same illustration now had a more scholarly and much less colorful caption, along the lines of, “The warthog can be distinguished by its tusks.” We delighted in imagining the outraged protests from some Warthog Appreciation Society that resulted in the politically correct change.

My friend Chuck discovered Moon Type in seventh grade while browsing through a copy of the World Book Encyclopedia in the school library. Developed around the same time as Braille, its alphabet consists not of raised dots but of simplified, recognizable letterforms.


The Moon Type alphabet
(lovingly rendered by yours truly)

Chuck and I decided that Moon Type, as obscure and yet as simple as it was, was ideal for passing coded messages to each other. We committed it to memory and used it thereafter from time to time when we desired an (admittedly light) extra level of security on our written communications — which consisted mostly of jokes, plans for world conquest, and not-fit-for-publication commentary on our female classmates.


“Book.”

On one dismal occasion, that extra security failed memorably. Chuck and I were at the apartment of my girlfriend Andrea (not the Andrea that I married). Andrea’s parents were out of town and I was hoping Chuck would get the hint about giving us some privacy. I wanted to use this perfect opportunity to advance with Andrea to, shall we say, a less consistently frustrating level of physical intimacy. We were having a grand old time, the three of us, but when the hour began to grow late and Chuck was still hanging around, I decided to pass him a coded message — coded once with Moon Type, and coded again by being worded obliquely in case of interception. The message was, “book.” I expected Chuck immediately to apprehend its slang meaning, which we sometimes used, of “leave” — and to be unoffended by the request, and to comply at once while making it look like leaving was his idea, as demanded by the Guy Code.

Unfortunately for me and my hormones, all of those expectations were wrong. I handed him the folded piece of paper behind Andrea’s back. Of course Chuck deciphered the Moon Type immediately — this was in tenth grade, and by now we had been using Moon Type for years. But our usual ability to know just what the other was thinking left him just then, and he said to me in a puzzled voice, “Book?” I tried to shush him and to clarify my intent nonverbally, but this only puzzled him more and he inquired again, within Andrea’s hearing, as to what I could have meant. Now she grew curious too. Ignominiously I tried to change the subject, and then (when that failed) to pretend I’d been trying to remind Chuck about a book he’d borrowed from me, but then why would I have written a coded message about it? Suddenly Chuck got it — “Oh, you want me to leave!” — and he got huffy, and Andrea got pissed off, and that was the end not only of that evening but of all future attempts to, ahem, “advance” with her.

At the time it felt like a disaster for my relationship with Andrea, and indeed it was; but I didn’t realize then that the lasting injury would be my guilt about having offended Chuck, my best friend. In the many years that have passed I doubt I ever apologized to him for it, and though I’m sure in hindsight he considers this incident to be minor and excusable by the ordinary cravenness of teenage boys, I still feel like I owe him this public: “Sorry, man!”


What brings you here 2008

Last year I joked about being disappointed that more of the hits on my blog weren’t sex-related — just 7.7%, counting hits for “vampire lesbian girl scouts.” Well, be careful what you wish for. This year fully 30% of the searches that produced hits on this site were sex-related, and of those, more than half were just looking for my tiny screengrab of Polly Walker naked — and frankly I’m again disappointed. In the same year that I brought you the stars, my own blog-a-thon, and the Bob-o-matic — and that was just January — you guys couldn’t get your mind out of the gutter. 402 posts, something like 200,000 carefully-chosen words, and all you can say is, “Look! Tits!”

Ah well. I’ll keep doing my part to elevate the discourse around here, but clearly if I want to keep my hit-count up I’ve got to throw the occasional bone to the lowbrow crowd.

Polly Walker; atia timon sex; naked polly walker; rome atia tits; “polly walker” nipple 16.3%
Rogaine; how much scalp is to much; script kevin spacey rogaine; itchy red scalp; rogaine before after photos 12.2%
Sex etc.; big bobg sex; jacking off using balloons sex; Masturbate biscotti; sexual positions lego; “Masturbate-a-thon”; Pretty Lady Sex; dildo attached to wall 5.4%
Susan Oliver/Orion slave girl; Green Orion Girl Porn; vina the cage star trek 5.0%
Erect nipples; notable nipples; hollywoods biggest nipples; cathy lee crosby nipples; sarah jessica erect nipples 4.4%
Vampire lesbian girl scouts 2.7%
Cathy Lee Crosby/Wonder Woman; THE ORIGINAL WONDER WOMAN; 1974 tv movie wonder woman 2.7%
James Bond villains; so we meet again mr bond+villain 1.9%
Batman; BATMAN GETS THE SHARK ON HIS LEG; batman hippies; batman mansion, gotham city; rubber shark batman; batman shark repellent bat spray 1.9%
Don Fanucci 1.7%
Star Wars; what date was the first friday in august 1977; TaunTaun Guts; exegesis the empire strikes back; how do lightsabers change colors in star wars; A picture of Han Solos face; will there be a star wars remake 1.6%
Birthday invitation 1.4%
Amy Linker; Amy Linker forest hills ny; Amy Linker Square Pegs 1.3%
Sir Topham Hatt; SIR TOPHAM HATT YOU HAVE CAUSED CONFUSION AND DELAY; thomas kills sir topham hatt 1.3%
Funny epitaph; Jewish headstone 1.1%
e to the i pi plus one; pi e relation transcendentals; arrigo mathematics 1.1%
Jaws ride 1.0%
Penis; kid draws penises 1.0%
Bob Falfa/Martin Stett; falfa vs milner 1.0%
Godfather 0.8%
Computer 0.7%
The Incredibles; lessons from the incredibles 0.7%
Raiders of the Lost Ark; bob falfa indiana jones 4; raiders of the lost ark, medallion; “raiders of the lost ark” “number on the crate”; musical note indiana jones theme 0.7%
Sharon Stone 0.6%
The end of Superman; how fast superman fly circumference; SUPERMAN REVERSING TIME; it is forbidden for you to interfere with time 0.6%
Jodie Foster 0.5%
Nygirlofmydreams 0.5%
Trophy; dna structure trophy design 0.5%
Comcast; threaten to disconnect comcast; PREMIUM CABLE CHANNELS HAVE ARTIFACTS; comcast removing channels 0.5%
Widescreen viewing area; formula “aspect ratio” diagonal 16:9; 4:3 area on 50 in widescreen; 27″ tv viewing area 0.4%
Star Trek/Enterprise/Kirk/etc.; Leonard Nimoy (Spock); “Trek 80” Game; first edition star trek star fleet technical manual; star trek Enterprise uniform sewing instructions 0.4%
Giraffe; giraffe drawn by kids 0.4%
Supertanker; dimensions of water carrying supertankers; become a supertanker captain 0.4%
Joe Costanzo; the primadonna joe costanzo; “Joseph Costanzo Jr. Pittsburgh AND Cafe Costanzo” 0.4%
Bob Glickstein; bang bobg; “danger inc” IMDB bob glickstein; bob glickstein hunter college; bob glickstein jonah blog; bobg clothing for women 0.4%
Dog; dog ate duraflame; “Alex The Dog”; car seat belt dog 0.4%
Pirates of the Caribbean; pirates of the caribbean scene similar indian jones raider of the lost ark knife dress; elizabeth swann red dress 0.3%
Salt Lake Flats 0.3%
Cigarettes/Camels/Still Life With Woodpecker; i haven’t had a cigarette for 9 days; tom robbins camel 0.3%
Thai gem scam; thai export center bangkok 0.3%
Sci-fi spaceships 0.3%
Entenmann’s; fudge ice’s golden cake; bimbo usa to drop entenmann’s 0.3%
Honda Fit 0.3%
James Bond; girls in credits silhouette of bond film; JAMES BOND GREATEST HITS; CONNERY BOND ROULETTE 0.3%
Millenium Falcon cockpit 0.3%
Games Magazine/Calculatrivia Marathon 0.3%
Contact film 0.2%
Vertical speed indicator/altimeter; how does a plane’s climb indicator work?; pitot static tube schematic 0.2%
Making Mr. Right 0.2%
Honeybee/bees in chimney; I am finding bees lying in my kitchen where are they coming from; bees in a fireplace 0.2%
Numerology 2008 0.2%
Indiana University; breaking away iu; “dan heller” bloomington indiana 0.2%
Lego; the ark of covenant made of legos; what is the smell at legoland 0.2%
Pez Museum; Why no Violet Pez?; burlingame museum of pez memorabilia 0.1%
Peter and the Starcatchers 0.1%
Candy; candy with cyclamate; candy invented in 1968; discontinued now and later candy flavors 0.1%
Bdsm 0.1%
Anakin/Padme; why did anakin turn to the dark side so easily; How much do Anakin’s talent, pride and ambitions affect his decision to turn to “the dark side”? 0.1%
Incremental backup 0.1%
Inverted flag 0.1%
Vincent Price; vincent price as the saint; Vincent Price – Freedom of Religion Speech; was vincent price gay 0.1%
Watch neighbor undress; URSULA UNDRESS 0.1%
Bush smile; bush paraguay; bush smirk 0.1%
Fizzies; fizzies magic soft drink tablets; fizzies into the swim meet 0.1%
xkcd; XKCD E I PI 0.1%
Bugsy Malone/Scott Baio; who sings coca cola give a little love and comes back to you; jodie foster in bugsy 0.1%
Carl Sagan; circumference of the earth + sagan; carl sagan “tonight show”; i had a crush on carl sagan 0.1%
Pine Knoll Bungalow Colony 0.1%
Splashdown; meaning of karma slave; “feel so elated” Would you, would you, would you, would you Please bring me joy; splashdown the archer lyrics what does it mean? 0.1%
Cynthia Nixon; cynthia nixon childhood; young cynthia nixon; “manhattan project” “cynthia nixon” 0.1%
Danger 0.1%
Adam Stoller 0.1%

An open letter to Paul Krugman

Dear Professor Krugman,

Congratulations on your well-earned Nobel prize.

I was heartened recently to read your column, “Life Without Bubbles” — not by the part where you write, “we’re in for months, perhaps even a year, of economic-hell,” which is just acknowledging the depressingly obvious, but by your assertion that “Late next year the economy should begin to stabilize, and I’m fairly optimistic about 2010.”

In dire need of some positive news, of something to look forward to, I seized on that “fairly optimistic” line as many others have done in the week since you published it, despite its vagueness, its throwaway nature, and the fact that it’s mostly beside the point of your article.

But then I thought, “Hmm. Suppose I were Paul Krugman, Nobel-prize winning economist and one of the best-known, most well-respected voices on current affairs. Suppose I knew the basic fact of economics that the public’s collective confidence in the economy is self-fulfilling: when people are optimistic about the future, by and large the economy improves; and even more certainly, when they’re pessimistic, it deteriorates. And now suppose that I, Paul Krugman, believed that things were going to get bad, really bad, for a long time — Weimar Germany bad. Would I tell it like it is — and knowing my own influence, be responsible for the resulting nosedive in public confidence and the economic ruin it would cause? Or would I feel a responsibility to say something positive even if I didn’t really believe it?”

So I’m having trouble knowing whether you’re sincere, or whether you’re secretly with Roger Ebert and just not able to express your sense of doom without hastening it.

Don’t bother replying. If you would write that you were really being sincere, I won’t know whether to believe that and we’ll be right back where we started. But if you would admit that you were being unsupportably rosy in an effort to delay the inevitable, that’s something I’d just rather you not say in public.

Whistling in the dark,
– Bob