Saturday, December 30, 2000

Huskies Victorious,

The UCONN women took care of Tennessee this afternoon in Hartford, cementing their hold on the #1 ranking. Nice to see: despite blizzard conditions in Hartford, the Hartford Civic Center was packed.

Wednesday, December 27, 2000

The Butler Did It

Caron Butler had a triple double in UCONN's victory over Rhode Island last night. Last time a UCONN player had a triple double was 1994.

Friday, December 22, 2000

Cluttered Lives

Good news, reports of Cluttered's demise were premature. P.J.'ll be back doing his thing in January.

Thursday, December 21, 2000

Boneyard Brilliance

I don't think we do a good enough job of publicizing Mark's "Boneyard" pieces, of which we have a new installment tonight. Hop over there and read the new one. When you're done there, treat yourself to a little trip through the archives. It's all good stuff. Here's a little snippet from the most recent piece, "Hail to the Thief!":
Has anybody else noticed that the 2000 election resembles a strange sort of affirmative action for the Bush clan? The Supreme Court steps in and declares how harmful it would be for poor little ol' Bush to go through a recount. This will forever be known - to me anyway - as the "give the baby his bottle" decision. The Bush clan seems to squeak through life with a certain "close enough" rule.

Tuesday, December 19, 2000

Link Enhanced Flavor

Flavor Flav the flav of all flavors
Onion an garlic french friend potatas
Make ya breath stink, breath fire
Makes any onion da best crier

Top Ten

The best Late Show Top Ten list about the election. My fave: 8. If you keep saying, "I'm the President," eventually people start to believe you.

Waggle Dance

The next time (not soon, I hope) I need to find an apartment, I will use "waggle dance" technology in my search.

Gains and Losses

Sometimes those stock options are not all they're cracked up to be.

Michael Moore Weighs In (Not A Fat Joke)

More than a little biased, perhaps, but still a properly sardonic commentary on the Supreme Court's decision from MichaelMoore.com. (Better late than never.)

Life After The White House

Clinton pitching an interview show to NBC?

Monday, December 18, 2000

Kung Fu Madness

Right now I'm listening to Deathcab for Cutie and liking it much. Also, as Fei-Hung, I have just attained my yellow belt. (kung fu courtesy usr/bin/girl)

Friday, December 15, 2000

My Top 6 Books Read in 2000



6. Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe. A soldier in ancient Greece is wounded in battle and loses his memory each night; however, he gains the ability to see and communicate with the gods and goddesses. The end is a bit of a formulaic letdown, but on the whole Wolfe avoids the pitfalls of genre fiction.
5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling. Juvenile fiction that reminded me how much I enjoyed the Susan Cooper books I read when I was in Rowling's target demographic. I wish this weren't being made into a movie for the same reason Bone Daddy didn't want a LOTR movie, kids are better off reading it than having stamped onto their imaginations in pre-digested form.
4. American Tabloid by James Ellroy. L.A. Confidential also bears mention.
3. The Tetherballs of Bougainville by Mark Leyner. You know what you're getting with Leyner.
2. Fair Ball: A Fan's Case for Baseball by Bob Costas. Lucid presentation of proposals to prevent the self-destruction of major league ball. Costas for Commish!
1. The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living by Howard C. Cutler and H.H. the Dalai Lama. The others on this list are better written in terms of prose style; I'll forget the lapses in style in time, not the arguments the Dalai Lama makes for compassion.

Thursday, December 14, 2000

Fair Pay

A take on A-Rod's contract that makes the argument for athelete's being "worth" what they're paid. I don't know why all the talk of the recent contracts being the death knell of baseball rubs me the wrong way. It may be true. I think it's the idea that the money is A-Rod's fault. I wish more people who wrote and talked about baseball looked at the big picture, of which this article is one part. Costas for commish.

You're Going To Get What You Deserve

Last night's speeches struck me odd. Gore seemed drunk. Like he was about to bust out laughing. "You suckers are gonna get what you deserve!" Bush was just his usual smug, two-faced self. I wanted ralph as he, of all people, talked about common sense and civility. His speech would have been fine if he had meant even one single word of it. Boy, he had NBC's Russert snowed though. Ol' Tim (sans his election night whiteboard) was impressed by the Shrub's sincerity. I want to play poker with Russert so my progeny can go to college on his dime. And how about Brokaw summing up the Shrub's business career like he's some sort of business genius who decided to go into politics to do some good. Funny how Brokaw failed the mention the track record of the businesses with which he was involved ... and his insider trading. There goes that "liberal media" again.

Wednesday, December 13, 2000

My Top 5 Movies of 2000

(updated 12/14/00)

I only saw 22 movies in the theaters this year, but I figure most if not all of the movies I didn't see were crap. I haven't looked at any film top this or that lists, so my judgement hasn't been swayed by critical opinion. It actually wasn't hard to narrow the list down to five either; this was a bad year for film. In fact, one of my Top 5 is a foreign movie that's several years old, but only got released here this year. And so, with minimal commentary, here they are:

5. "Shanghai Noon" Starring: Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson. Just a decent little comedy with people kicking each other. Jackie and Lucy Liu will both be on this list again. Beats out "Small Time Crooks," "Keeping the Faith," "Nurse Betty," and "Best in Show" which were also passable-to-above-average comedies. It just wasn't a strong year.

4. "Charlie's Angels" Starring: Crispin Glover, Cameron Diaz, & Lucy Liu. Yeah, I left out Drew Barrymore on account of I can't stand her. Sure, Yuen Woo Ping rehashed his "Matrix" effects to further prove he can make anybody look like they can fight, but redundant Yuen Woo Ping is still better than the incompetent crap that passed for action in "Gladiator."

3.5 "Ghost Dog" Starring: Forrest Whittaker. Forrest is the Toshiro Mifune of our generation.

3.25 "High Fidelity" Starring: John Cusak, Jack Black. I forgot that I saw "Ghost Dog" and this one this year, hence their hasty insertion into the middle of this post.


3. "Drunken Master" Starring: Jackie Chan, Ti Lung, & Anita Mui. Actually the best movie released this year, but since it's actually like 7 years old, I'm going to let the 1 & 2 slots go to new movies.

2. "The Way of the Gun" Starring: Benicio Del Toro, some other guy, and James Caan. I'm an action movie guy. This is an action movie guy's action movie. If you didn't like it, it's because your panties were too tight.

1. "The Tao of Steve" Starring: Some fatty who's slimmed down and has a sitcom coming to Fox. The closest thing to a "Swingers" to be released this year.

There it is. C-Dog's Top 5. I didn't see "Angela's Ashes" or "Billy Elliott" (I'm not holding my breath either) and I'm still waiting for "CT,HD" which H.D. is seeing tonight, to make it to the sticks. I'm perfectly willing to admit there may have been better movies released this year, but I bet not by much if at all. Honorable mentions? "X-Men" ... uh ... "Unbreakable" ... "Romeo Must Die." I'm tapped. Ooh, almost forgot "The Girl on the Bridge," which was actually pretty darn good only it's French -- and the French, to paraphrase a recent editorial comment in "The Economist," are morons* and can't make my list. Almost as bad as Canadians, they are.

* The comment was actually along the lines of how the French should devote more of their newspaper ink to Silicon Valley and less to Palm Beach so that "they might learn something useful."

I Want My CTHD

I'll be more guarded in my optimism regarding Chris ("The Usual Suspects" & "Way of the Gun") McQuarrie's "Alexander the Great" than I was for Besson's "The Messenger." I've been thinking about a possible Top 5 movie list for 2K and I'm pretty sure "WotG" would be on it. I'd like to see "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" first ... if it would ever open outside NYC!!

Dark Times Ahead

Gore has decided to concede -- technically he's 'ending his campaign' without actually conceding defeat. He'll speak at 9pm E tonight. This is the dawning of the Age of the Shrub.

Every Vote Counts

Jesse Jackson is given to hyperbole, but I was not aware of the specifics of his allegations about deliberate attempts to keep blacks from voting in some Florida counties. Who's the Texan Mrs. Harris who he claims turned away 8000 black voters for bogus reasons? Again, it's hard to take everything Jackson says at face value, but are legitimate concerns being swept aside in all the talk about dimpled chads?

Reasonable?

I followed a link from usr/bin/girl to Reason magazine. I'll see if the articles are as well written as billed, but I'm discouraged by the list of folks that have good things to say about it: Dick Armey (see "jigger of cat piss" below), Rush, G. Gordon, and Steve Forbes in particular. Zannah excluded, of course.

Molly At Salon

A good introduction to Molly Ivins at Salon.com. I just noticed she's no longer listed on Drudge. What's up with that?

Tuesday, December 12, 2000

We Should Be Better At This By Now

The sorry state of ballot counting in the US. An LA Times article. Among it's interesting points: Alaska has more registered voters than voting age citizens, and this bit -- "Indiana, which encourages voting with sign-ups by mail and at driver's license bureaus, has jammed its registration lists with hundreds of thousands of people who should not be on them. They include felons, the dead and many who have registered repeatedly." Our balloting system, if you can call it that, is a joke.

Sunday, December 10, 2000

Clobberin' Time

The Huskies were like the The Thing this weekend; it was clobberin' time!

-The men's b-ball squad took care of #5 Arizona before a raucous crowd at Gampel, 71-69. What a fun game to watch, though CBS took their sweet-ass time about it when the Illini went to OT against the Hall. I know, the refs blew the goaltending call, but still, it would've gone to OT and nobody but nobody was gonna stop Johnnie Selvie! That kid was awesome. I posted earlier a lament about how it seemed unlikely the Huskies would have a Ray Allen/Rip Hamilton type this year ... it turns out they may have to superstars in Selvie and Caron Butler.

-The women got Geno his 400th victory today by stomping the Lady Illini. They are so, so good it's frightening ... and they are playing without a center! When Schumacher comes back their average margin of victory should increase from 30+ to 40+ points per game.

-I don't care much about soccer. Who does? But, as long as I'm celebrating the blue and white, the men's soccer team took the national title today.

Friday, December 8, 2000

Like Lots Of Things

"... We got ideas, to us that's dear / like capitalist, like communist ...": Chimpanzee politics. (an old article, found recently at Robot Wisdom) (I'd been looking for a way to incorporate something pixie-ish into a post since the referral logs started showing a bunch of hits by folks looking for info about a spoiler for a certain movie that makes use of a great old song ... that I could do so in post about chimpanzees makes it all the sweeter!)

Curses

That "Cursed" show on NBC ... that is one bad, bad show. I can't believe I watched the whole thing. That's one half-hour of my life that is gone forever and it may be the single most tragically wasted half-hour of all my years.

Thursday, December 7, 2000

Cluttered

Darnit! He was one of the good guys on the "blog scene."

Modest Mouse

Speaking of new albums, the new Modest Mouse has been on continuous play since I started studying this morning and while I can't say it's had my full attention, I haven't had the inclination to turn it off or skip any songs yet. Loving the bitter sense of humor so far ...
"We're goin' down the road towards tiny cities made of ashes / I'm gonna hit you on the face, I'm gonna punch you in your glasses ..."

The Fall

The new Fall album almost snuck by me. Picked it up last night when I happened upon it at my local Newbury Comics. No chance to give it a full listen yet, but the bits I heard sounded decent-ish. Frankly, some Fall songs are just hard to listen to, and this album includes some of the typical atonal free-verse pieces that might be interesting to hear once, but generally aren't what you'd throw on to give yourself a good groove first thing in the morning when you're trying to get pumped up for the new day. Fortunately, the more rockin' songs sound good, so my preliminary judgment is in favor of the album ... though I'm going to bitterly resent it when the domestic release comes out with more tracks than the import I paid out my arse sideways for.

Crouching Tiger

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" opens tomorrow!

Tuesday, December 5, 2000

A Note From A Reader

The following is an e-mail I received from one of our readers who challenged my "stones." As he suggests, I am passing on his thoughts. He didn't indicate whether he wanted his name attached, so I will append his email under the name "Al." Thanks for writing "Al."

All right, enough of this communist manifesto. Seems that you & your other running dog lackeys have nothing better to do than to rip into poor dubyuh. Your post on Triptych Cryptic refers to the following: "Man, we're not going to have any readers left if the rest of the collective doesn't start posting about something interesting ..." Time to get a clue HuskieFan...it's not the lack of collective posting but rather the lack of impartiality. Oh sure, I see where you & your ilk are pissed off that dubyuh may be the next person in charge but think of it another way - do you really see where there will be a noticeable difference if we have one person as president over another? Personally, I don't care who it the next prez - after all, with the Senate & House pretty much 50/50 and as close as the race was neither one will have a mandate to do much of anything anyway.

Now, as far as the vote counting is concerned...correct me if I'm wrong, but Gore is only going after the votes in those counties where he thinks the count will lean towards him (primarily democratic counties). If he's so concerned that the vote was accurate, why not have a recount in all counties in Florida? [Gore, I recall, did suggest this and Dubya came out against the idea. -- c-dog] For that matter, why not a recount in all counties in the US? Sure, he won the general election by 200,000 votes but when you consider 2.1 million votes were declared ineligible for one reason or another, then the popular vote could swing dubyuh's way also.

The thing that chaffs me the most is what the election has all come down to -- 7 figure lawyers telling us who should be President & why. The people that started building bomb shelters, stockpiling food & ammo and declaring the world was coming to an end last year with Y2K had the right idea - they were only off by a year.

So Chris, if you've got the stones go ahead & post this to Triptych Cryptic. In fact, if you're looking for more viewer interchange since you don't have the 'chat room' perhaps you might want to interject this in a future posting.

Friday, December 1, 2000

Coach on Coaching

Calhoun on coaching at ESPN's Page 2.

Bennett Out At UW

I'm a little behind the curve, but I just saw where Dick Bennett stepped down the other day from the UW basketball coaching job due to exhaustion. I'm not a fan of Big 10 basketball in general, or Wisconsin basketball in particular, but getting that team to the Final Four last year (was it last year, jimminee they are flying by, aren't they?) was an amazing accompishment. More than any other team, it was (though Badger fans may be loathe to concede it) coaching that got them that far. They hardly had a team you would call "exciting," or "atheletic," or "good." Sure they didn't "shoot well," or "score much," or "look pretty," or "generate excitement," or "bathe regularly," but somehow ... in defiance of all reason, they made it to the Final Four.

Monkey News

If monkeys are in the news, for any reason, I'm all over it ...
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