Oliver.

To wash the taste of “The Time Machine” from my mouth, I watched my new DVD of “The Princess and the Warrior.” You probably haven’t heard of this film, but I think it was among the handful of good movies in 2001. A fascinating look at the role of coincidence in our lives, and how people can help each other fight their demons. It’s also a passionate love story between two people who do nothing more than hold hands.

It’s subtitled, strange, and dreamily slow moving, so I’m never sure who I can successfully recommend it to. But if you’re looking for something unpredictable and anti-Hollywood with exquisite photography, give it a chance. And let me know what you thought.

A belated but much-deserved welcome to Kevin Thompson, who brought his weblog Observations under the lucky8ball umbrella recently.

Pray for him.

Rooting around in my own archives today, I thought I would compile a list of some of my favorite posts from the past year or so. If this seems hopelessly self-indulgent, I’ll cop to that. But it was fun looking back on what I’ve wrote. Plus, it might give newcomers a little taste of what it’s like around here. Hope you enjoy them.

Rachel’s baby
The Truman Show
Defending Your Life
E-U-C-K
Touched by an Angel
Ice cold drinks
Meeting IRL
Manic-depressive Blogger
What I won’t blog
Call me Celestia
Get to know me!
We are not at war
I am a liberal
Scanning memories

The Time Machine

“That movie wasn’t about time travel at all.”
-Paul D. Harrison, Esq.

So true. In fact, this borderline crapfest managed to be about literally nothing at all. Silly and pointless, unless you absolutely have to see Jeremy Irons made up (unconvincingly) as a black-lipped albino with spina bifida.

And that makes it sound so much more interesting than it actually is.

Memo to Guy Pearce: eat a burger, fella, or you’re going to start slicing open envelopes with your cheekbones. And no one wants that.

In spite of itself, “Time Machine” does make me want to read some good science fiction about time travel and its paradoxes – anybody have any suggestions?

I’m a database guy. I love databases and the power they have over information. I also love pop culture. Up to now, the perfect mix of these two loves has been the Internet Movie Database, maybe the best use of database technology on the web. You can find out just about anything about any movie on that site.

Well today, I stumbled on the perfect complement to the IMDB – the MRQE (Movie Review Query Engine). You can search for any title (from about 26,000) and get a page of links to reviews of that film all over the web. What’s also cool is that you can call up premade lists of films like “Top 10 at the U.S. Box Office” or the “AFI’s 100 Greatest American Movies.” No fancy graphics, only one unobtrusive banner ad. Cool stuff.

Sometimes I enjoy reading reader reviews of movies on IMDB, but they’re most often written by people who either hated or loved a movie. Having so many other potential review sources at your fingertips can be great if you’re just not sure something is worth the first-run ticket price.

Anyone want to go see “Scotland, PA” with me?

Xkot’s post about chicken and ham reminded me of some lies I’ve told in the past. I find it pretty fun to spin out a tall tale every once in a while, especially because people tend to believe me.

The cheese test story
I mentioned this before on my about page. When I went to college in Illinois (Northwestern – you know, one of those second-tier colleges), I was bombarded by people who thought because I lived in Wisconsin, I automatically lived on a farm and milked cows each morning at dawn. Mind you, these were Illinois people, and flatlanders have very little justification for making fun of other people’s home states.

So anyway, I made up this story that to graduate from high school in Wisconsin, you had to pass a cheese identification test. Amazingly, just about everyone believed this. There’s flatlanders for you.

The Tommy Bartlett story
Also in college, at some point I mentioned that my mother’s full name was Barbara Bartlett Bunker Blust, and people found this hilarious. Somebody said, “So is she related to Tommy Bartlett?” Again with the Wisconsin-bashing. Tommy runs a series of embarrassingly cheesy “attractions” in Wisconsin Dells, a tourist trap I fondly refer to as “the armpit of Wisconsin.” “Tommy Bartlett’s Robot World,” that sort of thing.

So since someone was lamebrained enough to think my mother’s name was more than a coincidence, I just ran with it. Yes, he’s her uncle, I said. She’s going to inherit millions, I said. Everyone believed that one too.

The pot story
This one I’m a tiny bit ashamed of. My friend Wendy believes I was a big pothead in college. She still does, as far as I know. She was telling some sort of pot-smoking story and I thought I would throw it out there as a joke. But when she took me seriously (and also clearly was impressed), I couldn’t resist it.

What big lies have you told? (Not you, Miguel. 🙂 We already know.)

Unbelievable ad of the week

There’s a commercial out now for Best Buy, where the tagline is something like “Do you like to try things out before you buy?” First we see the guy in a Home Depot-type store, passing by the toilets. Then you see him look around, raise up the toilet seat, drop his pants and sit down.

Then, in the next shot, you see him touching literally every surface at your local Best Buy – computers, VCRs, video games.

Remind me to bring a can of Lysol the next time I go to Best Buy.

Right now, the smallest number of comments on a post on Wil Wheaton’s weblog front page is 41.

Forty-one.

(And no, I’m not going to link to him. You already know the URL. And anyway, this parody of Wil’s deathless prose is more entertaining.)

Here’s an idea: ban political speechwriters. If a politician wants to say something, let them say it in their own words. If they want to address the American people, let them write their own speech. Look at it this way – if your doctor had to hire a writer to explain your diagnosis, you wouldn’t be really confident the doctor knew what he/she was talking about, would you? So why do we put up with it from the President?

I personally think being articulate about the issues that their constituents care about is a non-negotiable prerequisite for being a political representative of those constituents. Isn’t that what they’re there for, after all?

GWB, get out that pencil. Let’s see what you can really do.