Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time and many other books, died last week. Wrinkle was one of my first tastes of science fiction and I remember being seriously creeped out by the Man with the Red Eyes. The book had that funky late-Sixties psychedelic vibe that you just can’t find in Harry Potter. I have the urge to go to the library, find the book, and shove it into the hands of the first awkward preadolescent I see.
When Al Franken first decided to get into the Senate race, one concern that many living room pundits (including myself) expressed was that he might have difficulty connecting with the good folks of this state. While I think those concerns still have validity, the latest Rasmussen poll shows that Franken has substantially closed the gap with our incumbent senator. Coleman’s numbers are under fifty percent against both Franken and Mike Ciresi, an attorney with deep pockets, which clearly marks him as endangered. With the election still over a year away, Coleman has to be thinking that his best shot of winning is to tack left of Bush. He’s already backing away from the president’s “war now, war forever” strategy. Before the year is over, he’ll probably make some carefully modulated noises about health care reform. But Coleman lacks something that his DFL opponent, whether it’s Franken or Ciresi will have in ample supply: conviction.
Tomorrow, I respond to the gentleman who e-mailed me requesting that I prove that I’m not, in fact, a rogue artificial intelligence living inside his computer.
3:10 to Yuma wastes no time in reminding the viewer that the Old American West was not a pleasant place. And for the next two hours, the movie treads even further into the bleak places of the landscape and the human heart. Dan Evans (Christian Bale) is a struggling Arizona rancher and wounded Civil War vet who decides to earn some much-needed cash by joining an ad hoc posse to escort notorious bad guy Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to a train that will take him to Yuma to face trial and certain execution. Wade is a charming sociopath who’s fond of quoting Scripture and sketching the women he beds and he wastes no time in plotting various ways to escape his captors. Both Crowe and Bale do a fine job here, giving nuance and depth to the stereotypical archetypes of the Western hero and villain.
The ending is something of a foregone conclusion, especially if you’re familiar with the conventions of the modern western. But it’s difficult to resist the movie’s gritty take on the genre’s familiar trappings. Stagecoach robberies. Cold-hearted bounty hunters. Gunfights in desolate little towns. None of these carry the odor of been-there-done-that. In fact, I’m willing to bet that this movie will spark a revival of the big-screen western, but any successors will be hard-pressed to match this film’s pitch-perfect mixture of plot and performance.
A few of my conservative friends (okay, one) are rejoicing at Fred Thompson’s official entry into the presidential campaign. Many conservatives are hoping that he can channel Reagan’s ghost and bring salvation to a foundering political party. I’ll say this right now: if Thompson gets the Republican nomination, I’ll eat my die-cast model of the starship Enterprise. Reagan’s success had as much to do with post-Carter malaise and a swing in the political mood of the country as with the man’s own considerable political skills. Thompson may know how to mimic Reagan’s stage presence and bonhomie, but the illusion is shattered as soon as he opens his mouth. Get this: he claims that Iraqi Sunnis are turning against Al-Qaeda because Al-Qaeda won’t let them smoke. Come again?
Thompson is the candidate for those voters who think that the policies of the last six years have worked out just fine. For Republicans who are leery of the current front-runners and who are searching for someone to lead into the final skirmishes of the culture wars, Thompson is probably their man. Unfortunately for Thompson, those voters are a dwindling minority.
“Finally,” I thought as I read about the release of the massively endowed and oh-so-very shiny iPod Classic. “Something that can hold my complete collection of Eastern European post-electro-neo-punk/emo bootlegs, which will serve as a nice soundtrack while I employ said iPod’s Coverflow function to browse through my extensive photographic library of scorching hot granny porn. I might even have room for a couple episodes of Battlestar Galactica. You know, just in case I get bored.”
New Scientist has news of a wheelchair under development that can be controlled by measuring brain impulses sent to the larynx. The user simply has to think the word “forward” and the chair moves forward. I dare you to watch the embedded video of the chair in action and not be at least a little impressed. The neckband looks a little uncomfortable, especially for those of us with trachs and ventilator tubing in the near vicinity, but I’m sure that can be miniaturized before too long. This technology seems like it could be adapted for other uses. I’d love to be able type these blog entries just by thinking of the words.
On the other hand, I can also think of hazards that might accompany such an interface. Imagine: you’re in your tricked-out wheelchair, cruising down the sidewalk, when the lyrics to Jesus Jones’ “Right Here, Right Now” pop into your head. And off you go into oncoming traffic.
Not tonight, love. I have a headache. If you need a quick fix, my alter ego-the smarter, better-looking one, just posted at the BBC.
I see that my arch-nemesis, Stephen Hawking, has published the first in a series of children’s science fiction books. The man will do anything for a bit of good PR. To the children of the world: Dr. Hawking is not a nice man. During our last phone conversation to finalize the details of our zero-g deathmatch, he threatened to do things with my corpse that even the Dark Lord himself would consider beyond the pale. But for a man of such bravado, he seems to have no problem coming up with excuses to delay our face-off. “I have to papers to grade.” “I have relatives coming in from out of town.” I suppose the next time I talk to him, it will be “I have to finish my book tour.” Coward.
I was going to write something about the MDA Telethon, but I can’t even summon the energy to care. Do people even watch that thing anymore? I get the feeling that the telethon and the Miss America pageant probably share the same dwindling audience. But I suppose the telethon gives B-list celebrities like Charo and Dionne Warwick a chance to feel useful, so who am I to criticize?