Feb In Review

Another month has slipped away.  Still no job, although I did have one on-site interview.  Even with all the time I should have, it always feels like there's never enough time to do the things I want to do.  So in a way, I can understand old people who really have nothing to do and still feel like there's not enough time.  Anyway, at "heavy game day" this month, I played Through The Ages and Wealth Of Nations.  And the games at "regular game day" were London, To Court The King, and The Castle Of The Devil.  To Court The King is just a boring, dice rolling time filler and The Castle Of The Devil seems kind of random to me, even though some people seem to be able to figure out which team each player is on even without using cards that reveal that info to them.  But London is the kind of detailed strategy game built on an historical framework that I seem to really like.

This month's movie list is excessively, abnormally long, no doubt enhanced by the fact that I do have the time.  But what's a couple hours a day. That should still leave time for more stuff.  A lot of these movies are serious and often depressing -- but those are also the best of the bunch.   "The Little Foxes" is one.  Some of the characters are so mean, but the family seems realistic to me, even transposed to the present day, 70 years later.  "On The Beach" is a good post-apocalyptic-nightmare movie done in a serious way which I had not heard of before.  And "Marty" is always good, even though a little quiet and a little too close to home.  So to speak.  There are exceptions to the general themes of "seriousness" and "quality", of course.  Mega Python, anyone?

(Ordered by date viewed this month. Let the good times roll.)
+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 2011-02-01 - Book Of Eli, The (2010)                |
| 2011-02-02 - Great Dictator, The (1940)             |
| 2011-02-03 - Anne Of The Thousand Days (1969)       |
| 2011-02-04 - Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (2011)        |
| 2011-02-05 - Little Foxes, The (1941)               |
| 2011-02-06 - Five Easy Pieces (1970)                |
| 2011-02-06 - Frighteners, The (1996)                |
| 2011-02-07 - Witness For The Prosecution (1957)     |
| 2011-02-08 - Separate Tables (1958)                 |
| 2011-02-09 - Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936)          |
| 2011-02-10 - House Of Rothschild, The (1934)        |
| 2011-02-10 - On The Beach (1959)                    |
| 2011-02-11 - Ball Of Fire (1941)                    |
| 2011-02-11 - Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954) |
| 2011-02-13 - Annie Get Your Gun (1950)              |
| 2011-02-13 - Robin And The Seven Hoods (1964)       |
| 2011-02-14 - Machete (2010)                         |
| 2011-02-16 - Picture Of Dorian Gray, The (1945)     |
| 2011-02-17 - Cat Ballou (1965)                      |
| 2011-02-18 - Stagecoach (1939)                      |
| 2011-02-20 - Alice Adams (1935)                     |
| 2011-02-20 - Swing Time (1936)                      |
| 2011-02-21 - Blow-Up (1966)                         |
| 2011-02-21 - Room At The Top (1959)                 |
| 2011-02-22 - Bad Day At Black Rock (1955)           |
| 2011-02-23 - Marty (1955)                           |
| 2011-02-23 - Summertime (1955)                      |
| 2011-02-25 - Bad Seed, The (1956)                   |
| 2011-02-25 - Devil And Daniel Webster, The (1941)   |
| 2011-02-26 - Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)           |
| 2011-02-27 - You Can't Take It With You (1938)      |
| 2011-02-28 - Lavender Hill Mob, The (1951)          |
+-----------------------------------------------------+
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Monthly Movies

These are the movies I watched in January.  I'm not sure if I can do this regularly or if I should bother -- mostly because I don't really have much to say about them.  Commentary, she eludes me.  I'm amazed at columnists who come up with stuff on a daily or weekly basis to write about.  I can say I 'm a sucker for any body/age switching movie like "17 Again" (or, for example, "Freaky Friday" or "13 Going On 30" or "Big", etc.).  "Room For One More" stands out in this (mostly and unusually) fairly recent list, but that's just part of my effort to see all Cary Grant movies.  In February it wouldn't have stood out, since I'm watching lots of old movies due to TCM's 31 Days of Oscar.  I can't say that I hated any of these -- although, how often does that happen? -- but I also can't say that I'm super excited about any of them.  Don't shoot me, but if I had to pick my favorite, it might be "17 Again", which is only listed first because of alphabetical order. I think you'd have to be an environmentalist to be ga-ga over "Avatar", or at least have seen it in a 3-D theater. "Sherlock Holmes" would also be pretty near the top.

+-----------------------------------------------------------+------+
| title                                                     | year |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+------+
| 17 Again                                                  | 2009 |
| Avatar                                                    | 2009 |
| Box, The                                                  | 2009 |
| For Love Or Money                                         | 1993 |
| Perfect Getaway, A                                        | 2009 |
| Promise, The:  The Making Of Darkness On The Edge Of Town | 2010 |
| Room For One More                                         | 1952 |
| Shallow Hal                                               | 2001 |
| Sherlock Holmes                                           | 2009 |
| Spider-Man 2                                              | 2004 |
| Time Traveler's Wife, The                                 | 2009 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+------+

There's No Business Like Snow Business

There's much chatter going on about the blizzard -- except for the people who delight in griping that it's just snow, it's Chicago, get over it.  But while you should be used to snow in Chicago, a ton -- like you hear about in Boston or Buffalo or maybe Minneapolis -- is pretty rare.  And thanks to our hard-working government employees, we can see that as far back as records have been kept (125 years), only 6 times have we seen snowfalls of at least 15":  Chicago Snow History

And, apparently, a "blizzard" means that there are 35+ mph winds accompanying snow that reduces visibility to a quarter mile or less for at least 3 hours.  How about that.

Cary Grant Project

I don't know if I'd call this one "bad", it's just less interesting than just about all the other Cary Grant movies on the list. A couple take in some orphans in "Room For One More" and prove that rotten kids can be reformed with good old familial love, with occasional little jokes about Cary Grant being neglected, matrimonially-speaking, because his wife's so darned busy taking care of family -- and stray animals. Heartwarming. The wife is Betsy Drake, who was the longest lasting (almost 13 years) of Cary Grant's many (5) wives.

1. "North By Northwest", 1959, also starring Eva Marie Saint and James Mason
2. "Bringing Up Baby", 1938, also starring Katharine Hepburn
3. "The Awful Truth", 1937, also starring Irene Dunne
4. "Charade", 1963, also starring Audrey Hepburn
5. "The Philadelphia Story", 1940, also starring Katharine Hepburn and James Stewart
6. "Notorious", 1946, also starring Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains
7. "His Girl Friday", 1940, also starring Rosalind Russell and Ralph Bellamy
8. "People Will Talk", 1951, also starring Hume Cronyn
9. "Houseboat", 1958, also starring Sophia Loren
10. "My Favorite Wife", 1940, also starring Irene Dunne
11. "Father Goose", 1964, also starring Leslie Caron
12. "Indiscreet", 1958, also starring Ingrid Bergman
13. "Suspicion", 1941, also starring Joan Fontaine
14. "The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer", 1947, also starring Myrna Loy
15. "An Affair To Remember", 1957, also starring Deborah Kerr
16. "To Catch A Thief", 1955, also starring Grace Kelly
17. "The Talk Of The Town", 1942, also starring Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman
18. "That Touch Of Mink", 1962, also starring Doris Day and Gig Young
19. "Operation Petticoat", 1959, also starring Tony Curtis
20. "Arsenic And Old Lace", 1944, also starring Raymond Massey
21. "The Bishop's Wife", 1947, also starring Loretta Young and David Niven
22. "Monkey Business", 1952, also starring Ginger Rogers
23. "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House", 1948, also starring Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas
24. "Walk Don't Run", 1966
25. "Destination Tokyo", 1943, also starring John Garfield
26. "Only Angels Have Wings", 1939, also starring Jean Arthur
27. "I Was A Male War Bride", 1949, also starring Ann Sheridan
28. "Once Upon A Honeymoon", 1942, also starring Ginger Rogers
29. "In Name Only", 1939, also starring Carole Lombard
30. "Topper", 1937, also starring Constance Bennett
31. "Kiss Them For Me", 1957, also starring Jayne Mansfield, Ray Walston, and Werner Klemperer
    
32. "Night And Day", 1946, also starring Alexis Smith
33. "The Howards Of Virginia", 1940, also starring Martha Scott
34. "Room For One More", 1952, also starring Betsy Drake
35. "Sylvia Scarlett", 1935, also starring Katharine Hepburn
36. "Gunga Din", 1939, also starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
37. "None But The Lonely Heart", 1944, also starring Ethel Barrymore
38. "She Done Him Wrong", 1933, also starring Mae West
39. "The Pride And The Passion", 1957, also starring Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren

Gas Prices

I've been seeing stories about $4 gas this summer.  It doesn't seem that far off. I'm already paying 3.40 for premium, which is something like 3.19 for regular. (I think the most I ever saw near my house was 4.25 for regular when it peaked a couple years ago.)

I found this interactive chart on gasbuddy.com. It only goes back 6 years, but that's far enough to see when prices first crossed 2 bucks a gallon: a mere 6 years ago. (Granted, I'm assuming it didn't do so earlier, followed by a big drop to get down to where this chart starts.)



(Note that this chart is live, so it's 6 years back from whenever you're reading this.)

Is this worth kvetching about?  That was a rhetorical question.  Here's something that bugs me.  Let's say we get $4 gas by May.  Doubled in 6 years.  But I'm not earning twice what I made at the beginning of 2005.  Heck, looking at today's $3.18 average for Illinois, I'm also not making anywhere close to 1.6 times more. If I really want to disgust myself -- you can decide which part of this equation disgusts me more -- I'll look at what gas prices would be if they increased as much as my salary did since hitting $2 a gallon.  You know, I don't think I could complain if gas had risen all the way to $2.33/gallon.

Reading in the 21st Century

I finally have my "books read" list into a mysql database. I haven't come up with any good report output, but I'm imagining I'll have to write some kind of program to generate it; something automated and better than the old manually created lists I used to make. Obviously, I'm not setting the bar very high, I know.

Given that, here's a simple list of the books I've read in the last decade.  Frankly, I'm surprised I was able to do this without relying on stored procedures or what not.

I realize this looks sloppy in Internet Explorer. But it looks just as intended in Firefox!  The perfectionist in me wants to waste the rest of the night trying to get it to look good in "all" browsers -- but the realist in me says, meh.

mysql> SELECT distinct b.title,
    -> (select group_concat(aa.firstname,' ',if(aa.midname is null,'',concat(aa.midname,' ')),aa.lastname)
    ->    from authors aa,books_has_authors bb where bb.authors=aa.oid and bb.books=b.oid ) "Authors",
    -> concat(b.monthread,'/',b.yearread) "Finished"
    -> FROM books b
    -> WHERE b.yearread>=2001 order by b.yearread,b.monthread;
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+----------+
| title                                                        | Authors                               | Finished |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+----------+
| Ways That Are Dark: The Truth About China                    | Ralph Townsend                        | 7/2001   |
| Check Your Local TV Listings                                 | Omar Williams                         | 9/2001   |
| Lord Of The Rings, The: The Fellowship Of The Ring           | J.R.R. Tolkien                        | 12/2001  |
| Lord Of The Rings, The: The Two Towers                       | J.R.R. Tolkien                        | 5/2002   |
| Death Of The West, The                                       | Patrick J. Buchanan                   | 7/2002   |
| Final Judgment                                               | Michael Collins Piper                 | 1/2003   |
| Jennifer Government                                          | Max Barry                             | 1/2003   |
| Planet Of The Apes Revisited                                 | Joe Russo,Larry Landsman,Edward Gross | 8/2003   |
| Franchising For Dummies                                      | Dave Thomas,Michael Seide             | 10/2003  |
| Lord Of The Rings, The: The Return Of The King               | J.R.R. Tolkien                        | 11/2003  |
| Sellout: The Inside Story Of President Clinton's Impeachment | David P. Schippers,Alan P. Henry      | 1/2004   |
| New Gambler's Bible, The                                     | Arthur S. Reber                       | 3/2004   |
| Basic Blackjack                                              | Stanford Wong                         | 4/2004   |
| Blackjack: The Real Deal                                     | Phillip J. Vogel                      | 4/2004   |
| Snow Crash                                                   | Neal Stephenson                       | 4/2004   |
| Losing Bin Laden                                             | Richard Miniter                       | 6/2004   |
| Madame Hillary: The Dark Road To The White House             | R. Emmett Tyrrell,Mark W. Davis       | 9/2004   |
| Diamond Age, The                                             | Neal Stephenson                       | 10/2004  |
| Cryptonomicon                                                | Neal Stephenson                       | 11/2004  |
| Acting                                                       | Richard Boleslavsky                   | 12/2005  |
| Moslems: Their Beliefs, Practices, And Politics              | Gabriel Oussani,Hilaire Belloc        | 1/2007   |
| Quicksilver                                                  | Neal Stephenson                       | 8/2008   |
| Confusion, The                                               | Neal Stephenson                       | 10/2008  |
| Mystery                                                      | Peter Straub                          | 8/2009   |
| System Of The World, The                                     | Neal Stephenson                       | 10/2010  |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+----------+
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Christmas Movie

I'm not a big fan of movies with subtitles, but "Rare Exports" looks pretty cool.  I saw this on io9.com.  Someone remind me when this is available at home.

The Small Town Secrets Suite

This song from "Behind The Mask" was also on "Pondering The Imponderable" -- one of the two mp3.com CDs I slapped together back when mp3.com was about the bands, man -- but with most of the introductory dialog cut out. That slightly shorter version is the one used here in this almost-video. It's just the lyrics, but it's a way to get it online. Facebook doesn't have the 10 minute restriction that youtube does, which means you have to have a facebook account to see it. But I'm pretty sure I made it so it's visible to "everyone".

This gives away a lot of the bigger plot points from the first 17 episodes of "Twin Peaks". But if you're like me you've seen them all a dozen times, so no biggee.



Part II was subtitled, "Ghostwood". And I never got around to making part III, which would have been Windom Earle related somehow.

Dungeons & Dragons

More nostalgia. Check out this ad I saw on Retrospace:

So I held up my copy of the Monster Manual next to my computer screen. The picture's identical, but it must be a different edition, since the words are in different places. I remember when I bought it (circa 1980), it seemed so expensive. I don't know how the edges of the book got worn and cracked. I haven't kept these things in a sealed vault, but I'm not using them to kill roaches, either. Must be the passage of time.

In addition to fantasy monsters like dragons and orcs and gelatinous cubes, the Monster Manual had more mundane creatures, too, such as this entry for "Owl, Giant":

Giant owls are rarely encountered as they inhabit only very wild areas. They are nocturnal predators and effective hunters. Giant owls speak their own language.

A giant owl strikes with its two sets of sharp talons and its strong beak. Its feathers allow it to fly with nearly absolute silence, thus it surprises on 1-5 (on a 6-sided die).

These creatures are intelligent and will sometimes befriend other creatures. If encountered in their lair there is a 20% chance that there will be 1-3 eggs (25%) or 1-3 hatchling owls, 20% to 70% grown. The parents will always attack any creature threatening the eggs/owlettes. Eggs sell for 1000 gold pieces, young for 2000 on the open market.

Stretch Armstrong

I never had a Stretch Armstrong -- or the many derivative members of the Stretch family. I may have been too old. I knew kids who had them. This guy at Stretch Armstrong World claims there are only about a hundred left in good condition. And that Kenner was the top purchaser of corn syrup in the years they were in production. How about that.