Happy Juneteenth

I never quite finished my holidays project thanks to the blog ending. I think it's important to call attention to the anniversary of emancipation in the U.S. The Senate celebrated by officially apologizing for slavery. I suppose symbolic gestures do have value, but not much.

I've been having second thoughts about kicking Panda out. For one, I wouldn't have kicked Kitty out for drug use in my house and I've been questioning whether it's valid to treat him differently. Issues like drug addiction vs. drug dumbassery and whether it's valid to have different standards of behavior for friends then others are the main issues. Also, it would make it harder to collect on his debt to me. I was thinking I'd tell him to sign over both his cars that are in my yard to satisfy his debt. One is totaled. The other just needs a new muffler. The idea of housemates was that they would either offset my house payments with rent or offset their rent by doing work around the house. As it is, Panda cleaned the kitchen once and hasn't paid rent really ever and Fox is way behind, but sometimes pay and is occasionally helpful.

Rumor has it "Ally McBeal" is coming to DVD. As far as I'm concerned, it's about time. This is hardly an obscure show and TV on DVD has been common since around the time it was on the air. There was one release with six episodes that came out nine years ago, and nada since. This is important because I credit this show, along with "Xena: Warrior Princess," which finished its DVD release four years ago, despite being a far lower rated show of the same vintage, with turning me from a religious conservative who wanted to keep women in the kitchen into a liberal feminist who hangs out with gay people. This may surprise some feminists, many of whom saw the show as sexist, but I think it's a topic that I should address in depth once I buy the show, which won't necessarily be right away when it comes out.

Imagine this: In it's sixth season, a popular teen sci-fi/fantasy genre show has an episode where the lead is attacked by a mysterious creature, then wakes up in a mental institution where they are told all the events that happened since roughly the beginning of the show were a fantasy created because they couldn't deal with the stresses of ordinary life. The mental institution offers a promise of getting out and a better life than they've known in the show, regaining relationships they'd lost and such, but this requires them to do something questionable. What am I talking about? If you said "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" episode 6.17, Normal Again or "Smallville" episode 6.10, Labyrinth, you are correct. I realize there are only so many plots, there were many points of difference and "Smallville" still did it a lot better than "Charmed" would have etc, but the truth it worked much better on Buffy, because Buffy was someone who always seemed on the verge of breakdown anyway (and was prone to impulsive and violent behavior). An earlier episode of Smallville with a similar premise about Chloe worked for the same reason. Clark is whiny and self-centered, but not really unstable. Basically, he doesn't seem like the type to be delusional and they didn't really sell that very well, and having some plausibility for the alternate world is necessary to make the story work.

When I woke up today, I had No feeling in my left arm. I grabbed my left wrist in my right hand. I could tell it was warm, but it was like grabbing someone else's arm. I couldn't feel a thing. This happens sometimes, so in itself wasn't cause for concern, but I attempted to raise my left arm and found I had no control over it. It just hung there. This passed after a few minutes, but now my shoulder aches a bit and the arm is shaking. This could be related to hauling heavy groceries. It seemed okay most of the day, but I am concerned. A little experimentation pressing on my shoulder seems to show I have a major nerve going over the top of my collar bone, which I don't think is the right place. My right arm doesn't have this problem. I've lived for years losing sensation in my arm whenever I carry a backpack or laugh and I am now told this isn't normal at all.

On multiple versions of movies

For my class on the history of Hellenistic Greece and Rome, I was supposed to watch Oliver Stone's Alexander. For some reason, when ordering my texts, I started to purchase it, then realized I already had it and thought maybe I was supposed to order Troy(which takes place in pre-Hellenistic Greece) instead, which I did, paying a bit more than I would normally be willing. I tend to get these movies confused because they both came out in 2004 and both are war movies set in the same general era (which is about like confusing King Ralph and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves because they both came out in 1991, were both about the English monarchy and set in the same general era, except more so because Alexander is based on something that definitely really happened). Last night, I went to watch it, then checked the lesson plan and found I was supposed to watched the director's cut of Alexander. I mentally kicked myself for wasting money, then booted up the PS3 and queued up Alexander.

Before getting into the movie, I decided to watch Oliver Stone's introduction. He explained the he liked the director's cut better than the theatrical, but with this version, he got carte blanche to edit the movie however he wanted without any regard for running time, critics or even audiences. I stopped the disk, ran up and hopped on Wikipedia and found out that, sure enough, while the final cut, which I had, was the real director's there was somethign called the director's cut which was more directory than the theatrical release, but less than the final cut. This is what I was supposed to watch.

My professor gave me the okay to use what I have, but waiting for his response wasted many precious hours. This brings me to a pet peeve I have about home video: movies which have multiple versions available, but only put one version on home video or make you buy multiple copies to get all versions. There are plenty of good examples. I have copies of Hancock, I Am Legend, Dark City, Battle for the Planet of the Apes and Blade Runner with the theatrical cut and extended versions (in Blade Runner's case, there are five cuts of the movie included), and this is just what I have on Blu-ray. On the other hand, besides the aforementioned Alexander, Windtalkers and Live Free or Die Hard have only the theatrical cut, March of the Penguins doesn't have the French version with the talking birds, Daredevil has only the director's cut and Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Superbad, Dawn of the Dead and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby only have the unrated versions. This is particularly frustrating in the case of Live Free or Die hard, because the unrated version is what I really wanted. It's not a real Die Hard movie with swearing. Daredevil is also frustrating because although the directors cut is far better and actually almost rises to the level of good, the theatrical version is a good illustration of executive meddling gone wrong.

My point is that including all versions seems to be the exception, not the rule. We have seamless branching for a reason and it should be used. A double-layer Blu-ray can hold about four and a half hours of high-def video without looking crappy assuming you don't go crazy with the audio tracks. This should be enough to fit all versions of most movies on one disc. Special features can go on disc two. If there's a difference that affects the majority of the footage, like a change in color timing or aspect ratio, get a second disc. Blade Runner has three discs for the movie and two for special features. I didn't mind.

I've been watching "Smallville" on Blu-ray and am now about halfway through season six. It seems that like "Star Trek: Voyager," it's a series that took a really long time to hit its stride, but did eventually hit it. It seems the producers are slowly catching on the Superman is supposed to be about helping the little guy, not beating up weirdos. It doesn't help that the weirdos frequently were the little guy by any reasonable standard. (This is frequently a problem in super hero material: see the theatrical cut of Daredevil) It also frequently annoys me the the writiers are cleearly big city types who know nothing about small-town America. Smallville's stated population of 45,000 would put it in Kansas's top ten largest cities, for instance. Co-creator Alfred Gough is from an actual small town of under 2,000 people, so they should know better.