The World

Juno

You must watch Juno.  This independent movie stars Ellen Page and features Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, and Allison Janney (for starters), and tells the story of a girl who gets pregnant.

I expected to see either “an emotional roller coaster” or “a heartwarming tale of a young girl’s battle to overcome family adversity and raise a child alone.”  This movie is neither.  It’s a charming story, in fact.  A girl in a loving family finds herself pregnant, and works through the situation.  She’s funny, her family at no point threatens to kick her out if she doesn’t get her act together, and the film never takes itself too seriously.  It’s the best of what independent cinema can do.

Bleeker: So what do you think we should do?

Juno: I thought I might, you know, nip it in the bud before it gets worse. Because I heard in health class that pregnancy often results in an infant.

Bleeker: Yeah, typically. That’s what happens when our moms and teachers get pregnant.

Plus, I discovered just after watching it that it’s mentioned in an episode of The Big Bang Theory, where Rajesh Koothrappali is featured in the same magazine article as “Ellen Page, star of the charming independent film Juno.”

D-Day

I’ve chosen my favorite story from Stephen Ambrose’s D-Day (having had to stop reading partway through and then pick it up again).

At Omaha Beach, the Navy prefaced the invasion with an extensive bombardment of Nazi fortifications along the shore, but then moved their fire to inland targets as Allied infantry began landing.  Since the Navy couldn’t possibly tell where Allied troops had already made advances, they relied on forward observers on the beach to radio the positions of specific targets.

The plan failed when many of the forward observers were killed, and those who weren’t found that radios had been dropped or destroyed when coming ashore.  This left the Navy out of contact with the infantry, and thus powerless to help the men getting slaughtered on the beach.

Frustrated, Destroyer captains pushed their ships closer and closer to the shore, at great risk of running aground, hoping to find some way of spotting targets on the beach themselves.

Comdr. Robert Beer on Carmick went in to within 900 meters of the beach, where he could keep up a visual communciation of a sort with the troops ashore. When he saw a tank fire a single shot at a certain point on the bluff, Beer blasted the same spot.  When he could see riflemen firing at a target, he laid into it with his 5-inch shells.

…

Frankford fired away from shoal water 800 meters off the beach.  Gunnery Officer Keeler recalled: “A tank sitting at the water’s edge with a broken track fired at something on the hill.  We immediately followed up with a 5-inch salvo.  The tank gunner flipped open his hatch, looked around at us, waved, dropped back in the tank, and fired at another target.  For the next few minutes he was our fire-control party.  Our range-finder optics could examine the spots where his shells hit.

A bit later, McCook had the perhaps unique experience of forcing German troops to surrender.  As [Lt. Comdr. Ralph] “Rebel” Ramey  was firing at a cliff position, German soldiers appeared waving a white flag and attempting to signal the ship by semaphore and flashing lights. … Ramey had his men signal to the Germans that they should come down the bluff and surrender themselves.  They understood and did, coming down single file with hands up to turn themselves over to GIs on the beach.

C D B

In 1968, William Steig published a book titled C D B! Like the “txt spk” of today, its entire text consists of individual letters and numbers that, when pronounced, sound like words.  For example:

C D B!  D B S A B-Z B.  O, S N-D!

This, as is obvious to anyone who’s ever deciphered a YouTube comment, is meant to read:

See the bee.  The bee is a busy bee.  Oh, yes indeed!

This seems less novel in 2009 than it must have in 1968, but it’s no less remarkable.

(Credit for this find goes to the Harvard Pops, who accompanied the book’s images and cryptic phrases with maestro Allen Feinstein’s own composition.)

I Can See Clearly Now

The Boston Pops (and the Boston Symphony Orchestra) launched a completely new ticketing system on their website last year, for which they deserve major praise.  Among many subtle and useful features is the one obvious feature virtually all online ticketing applications have always lacked: the ability to see a seating chart and select specific (available) seats from it.

Boston Pops Ticketing

Buy tickets by selecting the seats you want

I’ve already found the perfect seats in Symphony Hall after extensive trial and error, so before this new application arrived I had to coax the old software into giving me the seats I wanted.  Now I can see quickly which shows have my ideal seats, add them to my cart, and buy them.  I completely approve of this new site.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t accept my donation.  The checkout page offers a section to donate to the Pops, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Tanglewood, or “Education Programs.”  Since I’m spending less on the Pops this year than I budgeted, I added a small donation.  By the time I got to the “preview” screen, there was no trace of it.  Unfortunately for the Pops, the $5.50 per ticket service fee was then added to my total, making me disinclined to try again.

Now that my tickets are safely in hand (or, at least, in the mail), I don’t mind mentioning that Linda Eder will be singing with the Pops this year on June 9th and 10th.  This alone has had me jumping out of my chair with excitement since I first learned of it in January.  You should immediately buy tickets for yourself.

It’s a Small World After All

I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite musicians is Kayla Ringelheim — who, by the way, has two new songs you should first hear on her site and then buy on iTunes (total cost: $2.00; total value: priceless).

I’ve also mentioned before that one of my favorite poets is Sarah Kay — who, by the way, has a new (to me) poem called Peacocks you should watch online.

I occasionally search YouTube and Google for new performances from some of my favorite artists (including these two), and I do often find new content there.  I’m wholeheartedly in favor of paying for the work any artist labors to create, but I’ve also learned that new music from local artists (in particular) tends to appear on YouTube long before it’s available to purchase anywhere.

In the process, I also occasionally find sites that mention a performer’s name in some other context, without offering any glimpse into recent or upcoming performances.  For example, a search for Ms. Ringelheim some months ago found a page at Brown University describing some group where she was a member.  That’s interesting to people at Brown, but when looking for new music (as opposed to… what’s that word… “stalking”) it’s not especially helpful.

Then I searched for Ms. Kay this evening and the very same page turned up.  This got my attention.

It turns out to belong to an a cappella group called The Higher Keys.  First of all, they admitted two of my all-time favorite performers as members, so I’m impressed with their standards.  Second, the samples from the group’s 2005 CD (the most recent recording listed) includes an a cappella version of Friend Like Me from the Disney movie Aladdin.  I’m now really tempted to see if I can still buy a copy just for that.

Let’s all take a moment to be impressed at the coincidences implicit in all these events.

Butlers of the Information Age

The service Ask Sunday charges a monthly fee to perform routine tasks for subscribers.  For example, you might ask them (by e-mail, phone, fax, or website) to make a reservation at a particular restaurant, or to call local stores to find where a particular product is in stock.  Really, you can ask for anything that can be completed in 20 to 30 minutes.  Other suggestions from their site:

Update/Cancel Subscriptions: Figure out how to update the mailing address for my Business Week subscription.

Phone-in Purchases: Call J.Crew and order me the Cotton cable crewneck sweater in faded black.

Administrative: Contact American Airlines and see that I get frequent flyer credit for my flight last week. I forgot to add my AAdvantage number at the airport.

Lost Luggage: I just landed in Dubai from Emirates flight EK202 and my luggage didn’t turn up. Please contact the lost luggage department and help me track it down.

Store Hours: How late is the Crate and Barrel open on West North Avenue in Chicago?

It’s an interesting idea.  Each small task we need to do takes only a few minutes, but collectively those tasks can take hours.  Sunday’s basic plan costs $37 per month for up to 15 requests, so if each request takes 20 minutes you’re valuing your time at or above $7.40 per hour.

I’m not about to subscribe, but services like this make our world interesting.

Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist Sometimes

I stumbled onto an article in the New York Post on the identify of The Waiter from the blog Waiter Rant (which I’ve mentioned before).  Among other things, it says:

And profiling diners based on age, sex and race is still rampant in the industry. “I try not to fall into that trap,” says Dublanica. “I’ve had waiters say to me, ‘this group doesn’t tip well’ – whatever. I don’t believe that. The people who have given me the worst tips of my life have been white Anglo-Saxon males.”

Anybody else think the only difference between “this group doesn’t tip well” and “white Anglo-Saxon males have given me the worst tips of my life” is that the latter names a specific group?

Watch Me Pull Electricity Out of My Hat

Again disregarding the news itself in this morning’s newspaper and focusing on the advertisements, this one struck me on page B2:

Signup for a FREE in-school magic show for grades K-4.

“The Magic of Saving Power” is a spellbinding showcase on the benefits of conserving energey.  It’s hosted by Joules, the official NSTAR Energy Wizard, NSTAR’s master magician and energy saver extarordinaire.  Joules will dazzle your students’ minds with fun facts and teach them magic tricks to use at home to conserve energy.  The show lasts 30 minutes for classes of up to 50 students.

First of all, you get bonus points if you, like me, got halfway to the bottom of the next page of the paper before recognizing that “Joules” is not an actual name, but a play on the unit for measuring energy.

Secondly, what magic tricks do you suppose this entails?  I can certainly think of a dozen exciting Physics experiments that involve electricity off the top of my head.  Cook a hot dog in a couple minutes by applying a voltage across either end.  Make a pickle glow by applying a voltage to it.  Charge a large capacitor (1 Ferad will do) and then stick a screwdriver with a rubber handle across the contacts — big spark!  Et cetera.  However, all these things consume electricity, and frankly don’t even put it to particularly good use.

I’m a huge fan of energy conservation, but I admit it’s not very exciting — especially to children.  If NSTAR manages to entertain first graders by not using electricity, they deserve major accolades.

(At least two schools, and perhaps many more, have already taken them up on the offer.)

And So Has My Cheese

My favorite sentence in the entire Boston Globe this morning was not part of any article.  Rather, it was in a small advertisement at the bottom of page A16.  The line reads (emphasis and capitalization as printed):

PRESIDENT OBAMA has MOVED to a new address and so has Xtreme Action Paintball!

I understand that this is from the same family of advertisement that puts “SEX” in huge letters at the top and then says, “Now that I’ve got your attention…” yet I still struggle to reconcile the connection between President-elect Obama (hey, I’m writing at 8 a.m. and I won’t be the one to jinx it) and paintball.  Unless there’s something the Democrats aren’t telling us…

Now If Only It Had a “Coffee” Button…

I love analyzing how computers in movies work.  In S1m0ne, director Viktor Taransky replaces a high-maintenance actress who’s walked off the set of his movie with a computer-generated actress.  The public thinks she’s a real person and demands to see more of her.  Taransky eventually responds by scheduling a huge stadium concert, where Simone appears in hologram form amid a stage full of smoke.

He creates this elaborate effect with a simple button on the computer console:

s1m0ne-hologram

It’s lucky the computer comes with that button on it.  Otherwise he never would have pulled it off.

(It’s honestly a good movie with an interesting premise.  It just gets rather carried away with the technology.)