The First Christmas Carol of the Year

As in: Favorite Things

One of the other holiday movies that inevitably makes its way to our VCR (Yep, haven't repurchased on DVD yet) each year is Bill Murray's immortal classic, Scrooged. As with Miracle on 34th Street, I've seen this movie thoroughly enough that watching it has the same effect on me that Breton tried to achieve by holding his fingers over his eyes—namely, that my attention can wander to the tiny details of the story.

So here goes...

• Early in the film, Frank Cross pleads to his cubist Picasso hanging on the office wall to help him. A few minutes later, he accosts his secretary about her child's painting she's hung in her workspace:

  Grace: That's Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus.
  Frank: How many fingers does Mrs. Claus have in this picture?
  Grace: Eleven.
  Frank: Exactly. It's crap, I don't want it on the walls.

• When Cross and the Ghost of Christmas past spy on Claire in the bathtub, she's smoking a joint. I realized that two of Karen Allen's other memorable parts also feature substance (ab)use: dope smoking with Donald Sutherland in Animal House and drinking a hairy guy under the table in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Maybe she got typecast in the 80s. That's why we don't see her much anymore--she got pushed out by the Mary Steenbergens and the Andie Macdowells, who didn't have the drug albatross hanging around their necks.
• Another oddity. on returning to the present from his trip with Buster Poindexter (the G of CP), Cross hears Ebeneezer's girlfriend say to him, "I hope you're happy with the life you've chosen." Frank responds thusly.

  Frank: Yes, I am happy with the choices I've made, thank you very much.
  Ebeneezer [angry at the ruined scene]: What are you, crazy?
  Frank: That's right buddy, I'm crazy like a fox.

  Seems fine, right? But the weirdness is that the actor playing Ebeneezer is Buddy Hackett, and the Scrooge show is a show-within-the-movie. So B.H. is also playing himself. And Frank knows who he is (as the executive producer). Thus, the line could have been:

  Frank: That's right Buddy, I'm crazy like a fox.

  I wonder whether the script made the distinction.
• The film, made in 1988, uses a few detail shots in the control room to set the stage. One of the shots is a sign that says "Free South Africa."
• New favorite line. As Frank is telling the world about how to embody the spirit of the holidays, he talks about calling folks you haven't seen in a while:

  You can call a college roommate or an old army buddy. You can call your personal banker.

• Finally, despite all the times I've seen the film, I never bothered to read this sign before. When the physically abusive Ghost of Christmas present shows up, she first appears at the far end of the room, standing by a sign, with "The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies" from The Nutcracker Suite playing in the background. This time around, I puzzled out what the sign says:
  
  The Ballbreaker Suite

Shortcuts

As in: Favorite Things

In the limited experience I have with Macs, I've found that I hate not having a scroll wheel on the mouse. New use for the scroll wheel: when iTunes is selected, the scroll wheel will raise/lower the volume. In combination with Alt-Tab, I need not move the mouse around much. (Of course, I can also use the arrow keys and thus avoid the mouse altogether.)

The First Mailbag of the Year

As in: Favorite Things , Media

For others, it might be Thanksgiving parades or musak at the mall, but for me the first sign of the impending holidays comes when I watch (or more accurately, my insistence leads Jenny to let me watch) Miracle on 34th Street for the first time. Here are a few things I noticed this time around:

• Last year I remarked that it was lame that Cleo had to work on Thanksgiving. Jenny reminded me that Doris had to work too. Good point. I countered by noticing that Cleo is the only black person in the film.
• When Fred, the nice single man across the hall asks to have Susan come to his house, the housekeeper explains to Doris that "He's so very fond of Susan, when he asked I thought you wouldn't mind." Today that would verge on child endangerment.
• Alfred is the most accepting person ever. He accepts that Kris knows his name instantly. Then takes it without blinking when Kris says "Why do you like impersonating me?"
• "What if he's only a little crazy, like painters or composers or some of those men in Washington?"
• When Fred's getting ready for bed, he brushes his teeth and then finishes his cigarette.
• Santa Claus is an evolutionist: "You're the greatest lawyer since Darrow."

TiVo Fracas Roundup

As in: Copyfight , Favorite Things , Media , News

Yesterday, the internet was a-flurry with rumors that TiVo was implementing a copy-protection scheme that would prevent users from keeping shows beyond a certain point:

I recently got a sample of Tivo DRM, accidentally I suspect. Recently a Simpson's rerun recorded with a red-flag next to it (an icon I've never seen before). When I selected the episode, I got a message to the effect that "the copyright holder prohibited saving the episode past date mm/dd". I also noted that this episode could not be copied using Tivo Togo (Link)

TiVo responded quickly:

[The TiVo rep] said the copy protection is trigged by a flag in the video signal. The reports appearing on the Web appear to be cases where TiVo misinterprets noise in the signal as a copy protection flag, and imposes the restrictions.

"During the test process, we came across people who had false positives because of noisy analog signals," he said. "We actually delayed development (of the new TiVo software) to address those false positives." (Link)

But apparently, that doesn't make any sense.

In the room are film executives, consumer electronics manufacturers, software and operating system vendors, semiconductor manufacturers and conditional access system designers. When I asked them if they believed that noise could be "misinterpreted" as a DRM flag, they burst into positive howls of disbelief. One present talked about Macrovision's checksums and said that that must have been "incredible noise if it completed the checksum." A semiconductor expert laughed out loud. (Link)

Alas, I end up feeling link this guy

The basic question is why TiVo is implementing these crap features. But if you want to live with the features, the next question is, who has access to the flag controls? If someone inside TiVo flipped the flag on, for whatever reason, TiVo should say that now. If the broadcaster -- through the analog signal being named as the fall guy by Mr. Denney -- can turn the flag on whenever they want, the power of this feature is in the wrong hands altogether. (Link)

and agreeing that "while I'm a fan of the machine, I'll bolt as soon as this new "feature" kills out a show I'd been saving. There are alternatives that don't do this".

Why, TiVo? Why?

Brand Loyalty OR: Shilling for free

As in: Favorite Things

When I was looking for webhosting service (for my own domain, http://www.curragh-labs.org/), I asked a friend what he recommended, and he said DreamHost. Since then, I have always recommended Dreamhost to others, and I hereby recommend them to you. Here's my anecdote:

A while back, DH had a sale they called the "triple everything" sale. In it, they said their plans now included three times as much of everything, three times as much bandwidth, storage, etc. My plan went from 800mb and 40Gb/mo to 2.4Gb and 120Gb/mo. At first I thought it would be like cell phone companies, where only new subscribers get the new deal but nope, I got it too. For the same price.

Along with their fantastic customer service, I thought that was great. Now they send this in their newsletter:

2. Watch your disk and bandwidth quotas GROW!

The reason I mentioned getting scratched across the eye was because MY own personal dog, Salt (named after his taste), scratched ME across the eye last night! How did a 2' 3" dog scratch a 6' 5" sexy human across the eye you might ask? THAT is a very good question.

Perhaps Salt grew, as only living things do? Only living things until NOW that is! Because right now, or maybe yesterday, depending on when I find that script to send this newsletter, all DreamHost shared hosting customers' disk and bandwidth quotas are GROWING CONSTANTLY!

That's right! Every week, your plan limits will grow as follows, at absolutely no charge:

L1: 20MB disk and 1GB bandwidth each week!
L2: 40MB disk and 1.5GB bandwidth each week!
L3: 60MB disk and 2GB bandwidth each week!
L4: 80MB disk and 2.5GB bandwidth each week!

So, the longer you host with us, the more you've got! AND, we're so nice we've even retroactively grown your limits based on how long you've been hosting with us already (up to a one year max)!

They'd already given me plenty of reasons to stick with them. Now I'm even shilling. For free.

My new favorite thing

As in: Favorite Things , Nerdistry

I finally took a look at the "stats" page for my web-hosting service. The coolest thing ever: the search queries page. So funny.

I'm particularly intrigued by the nonsequiters: "donkey ride" and "rember it for you wholesale quotations". I feel bad for the person searching for "curragh building." I imagine someone in a workshop with a wi-fi laptop, lathe in hand, staring at my blog and going "what the hell is this now"? The real question, does my 'curragh-labs' site give any insight into curragh building? Does the metaphor transfer back?