Compassionate Curmudgeon

Thinking About Crime

I've just started reading a fascinating book called Thinking About Crime by Michael Tonry.

It's subtitle is Sense and Sensibility in American Penal Culture. From the preface:

The United States has a punishment system that no one would knowingly have built from the ground up. It is often unjust, it is unduly severe, it is wasteful, and it does enormous damage to the lives of black Americans.

Still Waiting

Still waiting for my 921 High Definition dual tuner DVR. [sigh]

The Producers Take My Advice

It looks like the producers of The Producers are taking my advice. First, they brought back the original stars, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, and now they are in negotiations with Kelsey Grammer to play the part of Max Bialystock.

Grammer wouldn't be my first choice, but at least he's a star with a name brand. Now who might they get for Leo Bloom?

One of the Good Guys

I was saddened to hear of the death of Tug McGraw at the age of 59. He will truly be missed.

About 15 years ago my parents had the good fortune to meet him in the Phillies dugout. He was gracious enough to pose with them for a picture. That's me holding the camera.

Turnaround Fund: four months later

I've now been invested in Arne Alsin's Turnaround Fund for a bit over four months. In that time I've seen my investment appreciate by 18%.

Not a bad return for four months.

Could someone please explain Buffy to me?

I've been collecting the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel DVDs as they've been coming out. I've never watched either series during their runs on the WB network, so seeing the episodes in fairly quick succession as I am, I'm going to have different reactions from those who watched them one episode per week.

Still, I'm confused as to why they became so popular with large numbers of highly intelligent and discriminating people.

Oh, I get the horror-as-metaphor for teenage angst and all that, and I admit to finding a lot of the writing highly literate and very witty (and I won't even add the condescending phrase "for tv"). Still, there are some aspects of the shows that simply perplex me. For example:

• Blacks and other minorities tended to be either victims or villains during the first few seasons of Buffy. Happily, this was remedied after a few years, but it's a real puzzlement on an otherwise enlightened show.
• According to the shows' mythos, vampires have no breath because they are dead and thus don't breathe. So how can they talk, huh? Or smoke cigarettes? And why do they often engage in what looks and sounds like heavy breathing after a fight?
• Also according to the mythos, vampires' hearts don't beat, so they don't have blood coursing through their blood vessels. Wouldn't their skin be pretty cold and clammy to the touch? I mean really.
• What's this thing about vampires being so sexy? I never did get that. This isn't a complaint peculiar to these shows because a lot of other vampire stories also assume that vampires are sexy. I just don't get it. Frankly, whenever they show Buffy and Angel smooching or boinking or whatever, I get a real attack of the yucks. So the Buffy/Angel romance that takes up so much of the first three Buffy seasons leaves me completely cold. Like a vampire's clutch.
• Why do the shows try to generate laughs from the brutal maiming and torturing of human victims? Of all my complaints, this is the one that bothers me the most. Oh, I can understand the shows' creative teams want the villains to be hip and funny and even occasionally sympathetic, so I understand why they are given some great dialog, laugh lines, etc. But it really rubs me the wrong way to see a woman have her neck snapped or a man savagely tortured to death and to immediately follow this with a laugh line from the perp.

Enough ranting. Overall, I enjoy the shows, especially Buffy season four where she finally gets a decent boyfriend (yes, I'm part of the tiny minority that likes Riley). And I like the Angel show a lot more than I expected to. I just wish they wouldn't try to generate laughter at the slaughter of innocents.

(Oh, I've tended to avoid the fan sites (except for BuffyGuide.com) because I want to avoid spoilers, so I'd appreciate not hearing about any plot developments that occur after the midpoints of Buffy season five or Angel season two. Thanks.)

Home Movies

I've spent most of my holiday vacation editing the video from my parents' 50th and 60th (yes, 60th) wedding anniversaries.

While there were frustrating moments, of course, for the most part it was pure pleasure. What made it so much fun was Apple's terrific software: Final Cut Express and iDVD.

I hope to publish QuickTime movies in the near future.

Some News on the 921 Front

I've been on the phone with my long-suffering satellite dish dealer, who has in turn been on the phone with his long-suffering distributor, and it appears that there has finally been some movement on the 921 PVR (or DVR as DISH is now calling it) front.

The 921, you may recall, is DISH Network's new High Definition, dual tuner digital video recorder which DISH has been promising for about a year now. It is shipping, but a lot of us are still waiting for it, most impatiently. Anyway, my dealer finally expects to get his hands on one sometime this week. So with any luck, I might have one by the weekend.

Of course, some lucky devils already have theirs. Here's a review.