(spotted in the service garage of a local car dealership)
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
Admit it - you really hate modern art
reposted from Family Adams Magazine
who reposted it from Asia Times Online
by Spengler
There are esthetes who appreciate the cross-eyed cartoons of Pablo Picasso, the random dribbles of Jackson Pollock, and even the pickled pigs of Damien Hirst. Some of my best friends are modern artists. You, however, hate and detest the 20th century's entire output in the plastic arts, as do I.
"I don't know much about art," you aver, "but I know what I like." Actually you don't. You have been browbeaten into feigning pleasure at the sight of so-called art that actually makes your skin crawl, and you are afraid to admit it for fear of seeming dull. This has gone on for so long that you have forgotten your own mind. Do not fear: in a few minutes' reading I can break the spell and liberate you from this unseemly condition.
First of all, understand that you are not alone. Museums are bulging with visitors who come to view works they secretly detest, and prices paid for modern art keep rising. One of Jackson Pollock's drip paintings sold last year for US$140 million, a striking result for a drunk who never learned to draw, and splattered paint at random on the canvas.
Somewhat more modest are the prices paid for the grandfather of abstract art, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), whose top sale price was above $40 million. An undistinguished early Kandinsky such as Weilheim-Marienplatz (43 by 33 centimeters) will sell for $4 million or so by Sotheby's estimate. Kandinsky is a benchmark for your unrehearsed response to abstract art, for two reasons. First, he helped invent it, and second, he understood that non-figurative art was one facet of an esthetic movement that also included atonal music. Kandinsky was the friend and collaborator of the grandfather of abstract music, composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), who also painted. Schoenberg, like Kandinsky, is universally recognized as one of the founders of modernism.
Kandinsky attended a performance of Schoenberg's music in 1911, and afterward wrote to Schoenberg:
Kandinsky was entirely correct in his judgment. An enormous literature exists on the relationship between abstract painting and atonal music, and the extensive Kandinsky-Schoenberg correspondence can be found on the Internet. For those who like that sort of thing, as Abraham Lincoln once said, it is just the sort of thing they would like.
The most striking difference between the two founding fathers of modernism is this: the price of Kandinsky's smallest work probably exceeds the aggregate royalties paid for the performances of Schoenberg's music. Out of a sense of obligation, musicians perform Schoenberg from time to time, but always in the middle and never at the end of a program, for audiences flee the cacophony. Schoenberg died a poor man in 1951, and and his widow and three children barely survived on the copyright royalties from his music. His family remains poor, while the heirs of famous artists have become fabulously wealthy.
Modern art is ideological, as its proponents are the first to admit. It was the ideologues, namely the critics, who made the reputation of the abstract impressionists, most famously Clement Greenberg's sponsorship of Jackson Pollock in The Partisan Review. It is not supposed to "please" the senses on first glance, after the manner of a Raphael or an Ingres, but to challenge the viewer to think and consider.
Why is it that the audience for modern art is quite happy to take in the ideological message of modernism while strolling through an art gallery, but loath to hear the same message in the concert hall? It is rather like communism, which once was fashionable among Western intellectuals. They were happy to admire communism from a distance, but reluctant to live under communism.
When you view an abstract expressionist canvas, time is in your control. You may spend as much or as little time as you like, click your tongue, attempt to say something sensible and, if you are sufficiently pretentious, quote something from the Wikipedia write-up on the artist that you consulted before arriving at the gallery. When you listen to atonal music, for example Schoenberg, you are stuck in your seat for a quarter of an hour that feels like many hours in a dentist's chair. You cannot escape. You do not admire the abstraction from a distance. You are actually living inside it. You are in the position of the fashionably left-wing intellectual of the 1930s who made the mistake of actually moving to Moscow, rather than admiring it at a safe distance.
That is why at least some modern artists come into very serious money, but not a single one of the abstract composers can earn a living from his music. Non-abstract composers, to be sure, can become quite wealthy, for example Baron Andrew Lloyd Webber and a number of film composers. American Aaron Copland (1900-90), who mainly wrote cheerful works filled with local color (eg, the ballets Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring), earned enough to endow scholarships for music students. Viennese atonal composer Alban Berg (1885-1935) had a European hit in his 1925 opera Wozzeck, something of a compromise between Schoenberg's abstract style and conventional Romanticism. His biographers report that the opera gave him a "comfortable living".
After decades of philanthropic support for abstract (that is, atonal) music, symphony orchestras have given up inflicting it on reluctant audiences, and instead are commissioning works from composers who write in a more accessible style. According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, the shift back to tonal music "comes as large orchestras face declining attendance and an elderly base of subscribers. Nationwide symphony attendance fell 13% to 27.7 million in the 2003-04 season from 1999-2000, according to the American Symphony Orchestra League."
The ideological message is the same, yet the galleries are full, while the concert halls are empty. That is because you can keep it at a safe distance when it hangs on the wall, but you can't escape it when it crawls into your ears. In other words, your spontaneous, visceral hatred of atonal music reflects your true, healthy, normal reaction to abstract art. It is simply the case that you are able to suppress this reaction at the picture gallery.
There are, of course, people who truly appreciate abstract art. You aren't one of them; you are a decent, sensible sort of person without a chip on your shoulder against the world. The famous collector Charles Saatchi, proprietor of an advertising firm, is an example of the few genuine admirers of this movement. When Damien Hirst arranged his first student exhibition at the London Docklands, reports Wikipedia, "Saatchi arrived at the second show in a green Rolls-Royce and stood open-mouthed with astonishment in front of (and then bought) Hirst's first major 'animal' installation, A Thousand Years, consisting of a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head."
The Lord of the Flies is an appropriate benchmark for the movement. Thomas Mann in his novel Doktor Faustus tells the story of a composer based mainly on Arnold Schoenberg, whom resentment drives to make a pact with the Devil. Mann's protagonist cannot create, so out of rancor sets out to "take back" the works of Ludwig van Beethoven, by writing atonal lampoons of them that will destroy the listener's ability to hear the original.
Many critics maintain that Picasso's famous painting originally named "The Bordello at Avignon" (Les Demoiselles d'Avignon) was the single most influential modernist statement. In this painting Picasso lampooned El Greco's great work The Vision of St John. Picasso reduces the horror of the opening of the Fifth Seal in the Book of Revelation to a display of female flesh in a whorehouse. Picasso is trying to "take back" El Greco, by corrupting our capacity to see the original.
By inflicting sufficient ugliness upon us, the modern artists believe, they will wear down our capacity to see beauty. That, I think, is the point of putting dead animals into glass cases, or tanks of formaldehyde. But I am open-minded; there might be some value to this artistic technique after all. If Damien Hirst were to undertake a self-portrait in formaldehyde, I would be the first to subscribe to a commission.
reposted from Family Adams Magazine
who reposted it from Asia Times Online
by Spengler
There are esthetes who appreciate the cross-eyed cartoons of Pablo Picasso, the random dribbles of Jackson Pollock, and even the pickled pigs of Damien Hirst. Some of my best friends are modern artists. You, however, hate and detest the 20th century's entire output in the plastic arts, as do I.
"I don't know much about art," you aver, "but I know what I like." Actually you don't. You have been browbeaten into feigning pleasure at the sight of so-called art that actually makes your skin crawl, and you are afraid to admit it for fear of seeming dull. This has gone on for so long that you have forgotten your own mind. Do not fear: in a few minutes' reading I can break the spell and liberate you from this unseemly condition.
First of all, understand that you are not alone. Museums are bulging with visitors who come to view works they secretly detest, and prices paid for modern art keep rising. One of Jackson Pollock's drip paintings sold last year for US$140 million, a striking result for a drunk who never learned to draw, and splattered paint at random on the canvas.
Somewhat more modest are the prices paid for the grandfather of abstract art, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), whose top sale price was above $40 million. An undistinguished early Kandinsky such as Weilheim-Marienplatz (43 by 33 centimeters) will sell for $4 million or so by Sotheby's estimate. Kandinsky is a benchmark for your unrehearsed response to abstract art, for two reasons. First, he helped invent it, and second, he understood that non-figurative art was one facet of an esthetic movement that also included atonal music. Kandinsky was the friend and collaborator of the grandfather of abstract music, composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), who also painted. Schoenberg, like Kandinsky, is universally recognized as one of the founders of modernism.
Kandinsky attended a performance of Schoenberg's music in 1911, and afterward wrote to Schoenberg:
Please excuse me for simply writing to you without having the pleasure of knowing you personally. I have just heard your concert here and it has given me real pleasure. You do not know me, of course - that is, my works - since I do not exhibit much in general, and have exhibited in Vienna only briefly once and that was years ago (at the Secession). However, what we are striving for and our whole manner of thought and feeling have so much in common that I feel completely justified in expressing my empathy. In your works, you have realized what I, albeit in uncertain form, have so greatly longed for in music.
Kandinsky was entirely correct in his judgment. An enormous literature exists on the relationship between abstract painting and atonal music, and the extensive Kandinsky-Schoenberg correspondence can be found on the Internet. For those who like that sort of thing, as Abraham Lincoln once said, it is just the sort of thing they would like.
The most striking difference between the two founding fathers of modernism is this: the price of Kandinsky's smallest work probably exceeds the aggregate royalties paid for the performances of Schoenberg's music. Out of a sense of obligation, musicians perform Schoenberg from time to time, but always in the middle and never at the end of a program, for audiences flee the cacophony. Schoenberg died a poor man in 1951, and and his widow and three children barely survived on the copyright royalties from his music. His family remains poor, while the heirs of famous artists have become fabulously wealthy.
Modern art is ideological, as its proponents are the first to admit. It was the ideologues, namely the critics, who made the reputation of the abstract impressionists, most famously Clement Greenberg's sponsorship of Jackson Pollock in The Partisan Review. It is not supposed to "please" the senses on first glance, after the manner of a Raphael or an Ingres, but to challenge the viewer to think and consider.
Why is it that the audience for modern art is quite happy to take in the ideological message of modernism while strolling through an art gallery, but loath to hear the same message in the concert hall? It is rather like communism, which once was fashionable among Western intellectuals. They were happy to admire communism from a distance, but reluctant to live under communism.
When you view an abstract expressionist canvas, time is in your control. You may spend as much or as little time as you like, click your tongue, attempt to say something sensible and, if you are sufficiently pretentious, quote something from the Wikipedia write-up on the artist that you consulted before arriving at the gallery. When you listen to atonal music, for example Schoenberg, you are stuck in your seat for a quarter of an hour that feels like many hours in a dentist's chair. You cannot escape. You do not admire the abstraction from a distance. You are actually living inside it. You are in the position of the fashionably left-wing intellectual of the 1930s who made the mistake of actually moving to Moscow, rather than admiring it at a safe distance.
That is why at least some modern artists come into very serious money, but not a single one of the abstract composers can earn a living from his music. Non-abstract composers, to be sure, can become quite wealthy, for example Baron Andrew Lloyd Webber and a number of film composers. American Aaron Copland (1900-90), who mainly wrote cheerful works filled with local color (eg, the ballets Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring), earned enough to endow scholarships for music students. Viennese atonal composer Alban Berg (1885-1935) had a European hit in his 1925 opera Wozzeck, something of a compromise between Schoenberg's abstract style and conventional Romanticism. His biographers report that the opera gave him a "comfortable living".
After decades of philanthropic support for abstract (that is, atonal) music, symphony orchestras have given up inflicting it on reluctant audiences, and instead are commissioning works from composers who write in a more accessible style. According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, the shift back to tonal music "comes as large orchestras face declining attendance and an elderly base of subscribers. Nationwide symphony attendance fell 13% to 27.7 million in the 2003-04 season from 1999-2000, according to the American Symphony Orchestra League."
The ideological message is the same, yet the galleries are full, while the concert halls are empty. That is because you can keep it at a safe distance when it hangs on the wall, but you can't escape it when it crawls into your ears. In other words, your spontaneous, visceral hatred of atonal music reflects your true, healthy, normal reaction to abstract art. It is simply the case that you are able to suppress this reaction at the picture gallery.
There are, of course, people who truly appreciate abstract art. You aren't one of them; you are a decent, sensible sort of person without a chip on your shoulder against the world. The famous collector Charles Saatchi, proprietor of an advertising firm, is an example of the few genuine admirers of this movement. When Damien Hirst arranged his first student exhibition at the London Docklands, reports Wikipedia, "Saatchi arrived at the second show in a green Rolls-Royce and stood open-mouthed with astonishment in front of (and then bought) Hirst's first major 'animal' installation, A Thousand Years, consisting of a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head."
The Lord of the Flies is an appropriate benchmark for the movement. Thomas Mann in his novel Doktor Faustus tells the story of a composer based mainly on Arnold Schoenberg, whom resentment drives to make a pact with the Devil. Mann's protagonist cannot create, so out of rancor sets out to "take back" the works of Ludwig van Beethoven, by writing atonal lampoons of them that will destroy the listener's ability to hear the original.
Many critics maintain that Picasso's famous painting originally named "The Bordello at Avignon" (Les Demoiselles d'Avignon) was the single most influential modernist statement. In this painting Picasso lampooned El Greco's great work The Vision of St John. Picasso reduces the horror of the opening of the Fifth Seal in the Book of Revelation to a display of female flesh in a whorehouse. Picasso is trying to "take back" El Greco, by corrupting our capacity to see the original.
By inflicting sufficient ugliness upon us, the modern artists believe, they will wear down our capacity to see beauty. That, I think, is the point of putting dead animals into glass cases, or tanks of formaldehyde. But I am open-minded; there might be some value to this artistic technique after all. If Damien Hirst were to undertake a self-portrait in formaldehyde, I would be the first to subscribe to a commission.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Holy Crap That's Cool!
I'm sure you classical purists out there won't be terribly impressed :P
I guess you guys aren't ready for that, yet. But your kids are gonna love it.
This is seriously the coolest thing since an animated rabbit sang opera!
Someday when I retire I'm going to learn to play that well.
I'm sure you classical purists out there won't be terribly impressed :P
I guess you guys aren't ready for that, yet. But your kids are gonna love it.
This is seriously the coolest thing since an animated rabbit sang opera!
Someday when I retire I'm going to learn to play that well.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Why Housing Prices in LA Are So High
(taken from iGoogle homepage, 7/16/07)
Oh no! Los Angeles is threatened by a CLOUD! IT'S ARMAGEDDON!
(taken from iGoogle homepage, 7/16/07)
Oh no! Los Angeles is threatened by a CLOUD! IT'S ARMAGEDDON!
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
RE: Fault Tree Training.
Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you for your interest in ********'s introduction to fault tree analysis training course. Please find the attached brochure with course details and pricing information for ********'s training programmes.
So we can better accommodate you, please let us know what dates you wish to have training so we can schedule it as soon as possible. Please note that availability is limited and, while we will try to meet your request, we may be unable to.
Also, prior to training, please be sure you have the following attendees signed up for the course:
In preparation for the training, please make sure each attendee will have access to a computer with the software pre-installed on it. We will provide temporary licenses for the training session.
I look forward to hearing from you and await your reply.
Regards,
Joe Belland,
******** Technical Consultant
Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you for your interest in ********'s introduction to fault tree analysis training course. Please find the attached brochure with course details and pricing information for ********'s training programmes.
So we can better accommodate you, please let us know what dates you wish to have training so we can schedule it as soon as possible. Please note that availability is limited and, while we will try to meet your request, we may be unable to.
Also, prior to training, please be sure you have the following attendees signed up for the course:
- Two (2) or more balding, middle-aged engineers.
- One (1) crotchety old guy who barely knows how to use a computer.
- One (1) or more crotchety old guy(s) who will sit at the back of the room and scowl the entire time. Optionally, they may heckle the instructor from time to time.
- Two (2) or more engineers who refuse to participate in the class, instead talking to themselves during the entire course and causing a disruption.
- One (1) token ethnic guy, preferably Indian, although Chinese is acceptable. His accent should be all but incomprehensible to a native English-speaker, and he should ask the most questions.
- One (1) token woman. Optionally, she may be the most extroverted member of the group and provide the highest level of class participation, furthering the already extreme stereotypes.
- One (1) engineer who looks like Michael Bolton from Office Space.
- One (1) young guy, under 30 years of age, who is probably the only person in the room with less experience in reliability and system safety engineering than the instructor. This attendee is important to make the instructor feel not quite totally worthless.
- One (1) guy who booked the training and has forced everyone else to be there against their wills, including the trainer. He should ask lots of well thought-out and meaningful questions about how to apply the software to the system that your company is developing, as if the instructor had any freaking clue how your systems work.
In preparation for the training, please make sure each attendee will have access to a computer with the software pre-installed on it. We will provide temporary licenses for the training session.
I look forward to hearing from you and await your reply.
Regards,
Joe Belland,
******** Technical Consultant
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Movie Review: Transformers.
My name is Joey Belland. I'm 6 years old, and when I grow up, I want to have a Chevrolet Camaro that transforms into Bumblebee.
If George Lucas has robbed us of our childhoods (that is the contention of many nerds my age, though a contention with which I disagree whole-heartedly), then Michael Bay has restored them.
Transformers is by far the most awesome movie to be released this year. It appears to have been filmed on Extremium, rather than celluloid. The main premise, that of giant robots which turn into cool things and fight each other in giant robot battles, is so awesome, that I crapped my pants no fewer than six times while watching it. At one point, as Optimus Prime is duking it out with Bonecrusher on a freeway, they fall from a high overpass, and nearly crush a passing SUV. Inside the SUV, a little boy looks up at the battling robots and, with a look of enthrallment on his face, says "Cool!" while his mother looks up in terror at the battling robots. Verily, I am that little boy.
You long-time readers of this blog may remember a post about the most awesomely cool movie ever. After seeing Transformers, it occurred to me that this Ultimately Cool movie no longer needs to be made. Transformers is that movie. Any attempt to top Transformers in Awesomeness would only serve to dilute the total levels of Awesome in the universe. Instead, it would simply be best just to watch Transformers again.
Michael Bay apparently loves things that blow up. He also seems to recognize that, when it comes to blowing things up, no one does it better than the US Military. For this reason the military seems to hold a place of awe-inspired reverence in his movies, and Transformers is no different. I can't recall a movie that had a cooler display of military hardware. In the opening of the movie, Blackout, in the disguise of an MH-53 begins attacking a US base in Qatar, which for the benefit of the geographically-challenged American audience, is identified to be in the Middle East. Explosions ensue. During the battle, Scorponok (of whom I have the fondest memories, and still resides at my parents house), detaches from Blackout and follows a group of soldiers who escape the wanton destruction. Later on, Scorponok rears his ugly mechanical head and attacks the soldiers, who call in every cool military air support weapon available. A-10s fly in, GAUs spewing forth hot leaden death. When the Warthogs prove to be ineffective, they call an AC-130 gunship. Mega bonus points for depicting an AC-130 in action, as I cannot think of another movie that so awesomely and extremely does so. It should be noted that the concept of the AC-130 was probably originally arrived at by a young boy; the very same kind of young boy who would find monstrous 30-foot robots battling to the death on the highway cool. I'm sure the design of the AC-130 went something like this:
Lockheed Aeronautical Engineer, coming home from work: "Hey, son, look at this model for the C-130, the Army's newest cargo plane."
Visionary Young Boy: "Cargo planes are boring. What would be really cool is if you put a 25mm Gatling gun, a 40mm cannon, and a 105mm howitzer in it."
Lockheed Engineer: (quickly jotting down notes) "...105... mm... howitzer...."
And before we change the subject away from cool displays of military hardware, let's not forget the climactic battle towards the end of the movie where Starscream, disguised as an F-22 Raptor, engages in a dogfight with about eight other US Air Force F-22s and in mid-flight transforms into a robot and begins shooting at the Raptors before turning back into an F-22 and speeding off. Awesomeness, thy name is Michael Bay.
The parts of the movie that are not a commercial for the Army are a commercial for GM, particularly Chevrolet, who could not pay for better advertising for the 2008 Camaro, which launches next year. Midway through the movie, Bumblebee, who had been a '76 Camaro up to that point, changes himself into the '08 Camaro prototype. What follows next is a 15-second Chevrolet commercial consisting of various stylish shots of the car. The downside is that, having taken The Murloc to see the movie, I'm pretty sure I'm now obligated to buy her a new Camaro next year. Apparently I missed that in the fine print of the wedding vows.
It goes on. Ironhide is a GMC pickup truck, Jazz is the incredibly stylish Pontiac Solstice (which I probably would have got instead of my G6, were it not for a silly little thing such as prudently planning for the future) and Ratchet is an H2. Closeups and shots that I swear came right out of a car commercial accompany each. Make no mistake. I have no objections to any of this. My one hope is that in the inevitable sequel, they bring back Bluestreak and make him the Pontiac G6 GXP.
As if to make perfectly clear the GM-leaning bias of the movie, one of the Decepticons who figures prominently early in the movie is Barricade, who is a Saleen Mustang police cruiser. In the climactic battle between Bumblebee as the Camaro and Barricade as the Mustang, the audience is reminded of one very important truth: GM Good! Ford Bad! Of course, the Camaro wins this battle, as it should, but what is most humiliating and subjugating for Ford is that at this point in the movie, Bumblebee is still his '76 self. It's as if Chevrolet is saying "our 21-year-old Camaro is still better than your piece of crap you call a muscle car." It is important to note that this battle is climactic even though it takes place in the first hour of the film. All the battles are climactic in a film as Extreme as this one. This is because all other movies are a joke. Transformers is the punchline.
As far as Michael Bay stereotypes, this movie has them all. The incredibly hot hacker chick who knows more than the entire DoD; the fat hacker who works out of grandma's basement; the incredibly hot chick who dumps her dumb jock boyfriend to be with the nerdy guy; and the soldier who is just trying to survive long enough to make it back home to see his girl and newborn baby. I think perhaps I need to modify the statement at the beginning of this post. When I grow up I want to make out with a hot chick on the hood of my '08 Camaro. I have the hot chick, I just need the '08 Camaro. I suppose I could substitute an '02, but I think The Murloc would rather die than risk scratching the hood of her car.
Perhaps one of the greatest little touches is Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime. He returns here, after 20 years, to provide the voice to the greatest giant robot of all time. If there were any lingering doubts about the authenticity of the movie, they vanished when he delivered his trade-mark line: "Autobots, roll out."
My name is Joey Belland. I'm 6 years old, and when I grow up, I want to have a Chevrolet Camaro that transforms into Bumblebee.
If George Lucas has robbed us of our childhoods (that is the contention of many nerds my age, though a contention with which I disagree whole-heartedly), then Michael Bay has restored them.
Transformers is by far the most awesome movie to be released this year. It appears to have been filmed on Extremium, rather than celluloid. The main premise, that of giant robots which turn into cool things and fight each other in giant robot battles, is so awesome, that I crapped my pants no fewer than six times while watching it. At one point, as Optimus Prime is duking it out with Bonecrusher on a freeway, they fall from a high overpass, and nearly crush a passing SUV. Inside the SUV, a little boy looks up at the battling robots and, with a look of enthrallment on his face, says "Cool!" while his mother looks up in terror at the battling robots. Verily, I am that little boy.
You long-time readers of this blog may remember a post about the most awesomely cool movie ever. After seeing Transformers, it occurred to me that this Ultimately Cool movie no longer needs to be made. Transformers is that movie. Any attempt to top Transformers in Awesomeness would only serve to dilute the total levels of Awesome in the universe. Instead, it would simply be best just to watch Transformers again.
Michael Bay apparently loves things that blow up. He also seems to recognize that, when it comes to blowing things up, no one does it better than the US Military. For this reason the military seems to hold a place of awe-inspired reverence in his movies, and Transformers is no different. I can't recall a movie that had a cooler display of military hardware. In the opening of the movie, Blackout, in the disguise of an MH-53 begins attacking a US base in Qatar, which for the benefit of the geographically-challenged American audience, is identified to be in the Middle East. Explosions ensue. During the battle, Scorponok (of whom I have the fondest memories, and still resides at my parents house), detaches from Blackout and follows a group of soldiers who escape the wanton destruction. Later on, Scorponok rears his ugly mechanical head and attacks the soldiers, who call in every cool military air support weapon available. A-10s fly in, GAUs spewing forth hot leaden death. When the Warthogs prove to be ineffective, they call an AC-130 gunship. Mega bonus points for depicting an AC-130 in action, as I cannot think of another movie that so awesomely and extremely does so. It should be noted that the concept of the AC-130 was probably originally arrived at by a young boy; the very same kind of young boy who would find monstrous 30-foot robots battling to the death on the highway cool. I'm sure the design of the AC-130 went something like this:
Lockheed Aeronautical Engineer, coming home from work: "Hey, son, look at this model for the C-130, the Army's newest cargo plane."
Visionary Young Boy: "Cargo planes are boring. What would be really cool is if you put a 25mm Gatling gun, a 40mm cannon, and a 105mm howitzer in it."
Lockheed Engineer: (quickly jotting down notes) "...105... mm... howitzer...."
And before we change the subject away from cool displays of military hardware, let's not forget the climactic battle towards the end of the movie where Starscream, disguised as an F-22 Raptor, engages in a dogfight with about eight other US Air Force F-22s and in mid-flight transforms into a robot and begins shooting at the Raptors before turning back into an F-22 and speeding off. Awesomeness, thy name is Michael Bay.
The parts of the movie that are not a commercial for the Army are a commercial for GM, particularly Chevrolet, who could not pay for better advertising for the 2008 Camaro, which launches next year. Midway through the movie, Bumblebee, who had been a '76 Camaro up to that point, changes himself into the '08 Camaro prototype. What follows next is a 15-second Chevrolet commercial consisting of various stylish shots of the car. The downside is that, having taken The Murloc to see the movie, I'm pretty sure I'm now obligated to buy her a new Camaro next year. Apparently I missed that in the fine print of the wedding vows.
It goes on. Ironhide is a GMC pickup truck, Jazz is the incredibly stylish Pontiac Solstice (which I probably would have got instead of my G6, were it not for a silly little thing such as prudently planning for the future) and Ratchet is an H2. Closeups and shots that I swear came right out of a car commercial accompany each. Make no mistake. I have no objections to any of this. My one hope is that in the inevitable sequel, they bring back Bluestreak and make him the Pontiac G6 GXP.
As if to make perfectly clear the GM-leaning bias of the movie, one of the Decepticons who figures prominently early in the movie is Barricade, who is a Saleen Mustang police cruiser. In the climactic battle between Bumblebee as the Camaro and Barricade as the Mustang, the audience is reminded of one very important truth: GM Good! Ford Bad! Of course, the Camaro wins this battle, as it should, but what is most humiliating and subjugating for Ford is that at this point in the movie, Bumblebee is still his '76 self. It's as if Chevrolet is saying "our 21-year-old Camaro is still better than your piece of crap you call a muscle car." It is important to note that this battle is climactic even though it takes place in the first hour of the film. All the battles are climactic in a film as Extreme as this one. This is because all other movies are a joke. Transformers is the punchline.
As far as Michael Bay stereotypes, this movie has them all. The incredibly hot hacker chick who knows more than the entire DoD; the fat hacker who works out of grandma's basement; the incredibly hot chick who dumps her dumb jock boyfriend to be with the nerdy guy; and the soldier who is just trying to survive long enough to make it back home to see his girl and newborn baby. I think perhaps I need to modify the statement at the beginning of this post. When I grow up I want to make out with a hot chick on the hood of my '08 Camaro. I have the hot chick, I just need the '08 Camaro. I suppose I could substitute an '02, but I think The Murloc would rather die than risk scratching the hood of her car.
Perhaps one of the greatest little touches is Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime. He returns here, after 20 years, to provide the voice to the greatest giant robot of all time. If there were any lingering doubts about the authenticity of the movie, they vanished when he delivered his trade-mark line: "Autobots, roll out."
- The pessimist says "the glass is half-empty."
- The optimist says "the glass is half-full."
- The literalist says "the glass is completely full; half with water, half with air."
- The engineer says "the glass is twice as large as it needs to be."
- The mathematician says "the percentage of glass, by volume, that is filled with liquid can be approximated by the ratio one over two."
- The chemist says "the bottom half of the glass contains a hydrogen-oxygen substance which is a solid at STP and the top half contains a homogeneous, gaseous mixture consisting primarily of nitrogen and oxygen, with a few other compounds and elements."
- The statistician says "by randomly sampling the population, we can determine the mean, median, and standard deviation for percentage of the population that perceives the glass as half-full and by fitting a probability density function to the data, we could tell the probability that any randomly chosen person would see it as half-empty."
- The journalist says "Tragedy struck the world today, as civil war broke out between rival factions, at odds with each other about whether the glass is half empty or half full."
- The psychiatrist says "the way you view the liquid in the glass is evidence of your repressed sexual desires."
- The sociologist says "the way you perceive the glass is the by-product of class warfare within a society which unfairly treats women and minorities."
Monday, July 9, 2007
Happy 31st Birthday to Mrs. Pickles!
So very, very OLD.
I swear, I did not forget and then back-date this post to make it look like I remembered.
So very, very OLD.
I swear, I did not forget and then back-date this post to make it look like I remembered.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Sunday, July 1, 2007
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