Author: Mike

Have you been looking to donate to moveon.org but, like me, are too apathetic and lazy to donate money without getting anything in return? I came close with the amazing Errol Morris switch ads, but, like most, I just couldn't crack my wallet.

Well, here is everyone's chance. This week only, Mission of Burma's vocalist/guitarist Roger Miller is selling off a chunk of his private Mission of Burma collection, both records and ephemera, on ebay. All proceeds go to moveon.org. As far as I can find moveon.org, coming out of their virtual yard sale, isn't shooting out an email or promoting this on their webpage, so I'm getting out the word here.

Because really, if the chance of owning Roger Miller's own acetate copy of "Signals, Calls & Marches" isn't going to get you to crack the piggy bank and donate, then nothing is.

I like reading the New York Times online, if only for that magic moment that occurs every so often when you realize that it's core demographic makes over $100,000 a year. Usually that time is reserved for their Travel Magazine section, but today's Health Section gave me a whooper: How Young Is Too Young to Have a Nose Job and Breast Implants?

I love that parents need to be told the following statement from a doctor: "'Diet and exercise, not liposuction', he said, 'are the proper ways to treat excess weight in children.'" Really?

The article also highlights which ages are appropriate to begin having certain kinds of surgery done as the body of a teenager is going through puberty and changing all the time.

"But they have found that nose growth ends earlier, and now do nose jobs, known as rhinoplasty, on girls at age 13 and boys at 14."

And if this following statement doesn't upset you it may mean you have no soul: "By the age of 6, kids can participate in the decision to have surgery and understand why it is being done." Quote the Dr. Steven J. Pearlman, a facial plastic surgeon in New York, whose potential financial interest I'm sure in no way conflicts with his medical advice.

I'd really rather you be a crack mom leaving their child home all day to play with hot pipes than encouraging and paying for your 6 year old to get a quick nip/tuck. I think the crack would be better in the long term for the well-being of your child.

Keeping with the theme of target demographics, this made me check out the Health Section of south-side favorite The Chicago Sun-Times today as well. Their lead story covers current sports medicine: ACL tears not what they used to be. It's funny, as the level of authority in tone and overall knowledge and presentation of medicine is significantly higher in the Sun Times article.

I will now give a summary of the following target markets. New York Times: how soon is too soon to give my child plastic surgery? Chicago Sun-Times: can a quarterback recover from a tear to his anterior cruciate ligament?

God bless the second city, everyone.
buy cialis generic yourcialisrx.com over the counter

Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum talks about Essential Cinema. Sat 9/25, 3 PM, Barnes & Noble, 1441 W. Webster.

This man is so heroic to me that if an eagle was to majestically land on his forearm while he was giving his lecture I wouldn't even miss a beat.

"Corporate lobbyists are writing the rules for the EPA under the Bush administration." When I've made that statement in the past, I've never meant it literally – I've only meant that the EPA are supporting corporations in a way that makes it look like the corporations are telling them what to do.

Well, it turns out I was wrong there. Lobbyists are actually writing for the EPA. On Wednesday the Washington Post found that EPA's report for Mecury regulation was nearly identical to a lobbyist's proposal, the third such instance they have uncovered:

The Aug. 5, 2002, memo from Latham & Watkins, submitted during the public comment period on the rule, said hazardous air pollutants other than mercury did not need to be regulated.
…
The EPA used nearly identical language in its rule, changing just eight words. In a separate section, the agency used the same italics Latham lawyers used in their memo, saying the EPA is required to regulate only the pollutants under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act "after considering the results of the study required by this paragraph." The memo uses the word "subparagraph" instead of paragraph but is otherwise identical.

Eight word! They didn't even change the italics! Two of our staff are grad students given to grading undergrad papers, and though I don't do it myself, I could only assume that they are disappointed at the poor levels of plagarism displayed by our appointed officials.

So there you have it. Regulating chromium, lead and arsenic pollution levels in our drinking water is a matter left to the market. Granted it's possible that the lawyers at Latham & Watkins have people's best interests at heart, but just seeing their webpage makes my skin crawl. There's a point where President Bush is just rubbing our face in it. I understand that you've sold out the people's faith in an independently run government agency protecting the environment, but could you not be so, ummm, obvious about it?

It must really suck to be a deer in today's world. With sprawl, pollution and ecosystems in disarray life must be hard on poor Bambi. And at 12:01am Monday, it's about to get even worse – because that's when the Clinton passed Assult Rifle Ban is set to be repealed.

I mention deer only because while doing research about the topic I came across this post by user JesusCyborg on a gun board: "You don't think guns are awesome? Well to each their own. I do. I can't wait to get my hands on an assault rifle so I can pump some deer full of lead."

So maybe that is that. Maybe a bunch of rednecks will take uzis and AK-47s into the woods and hunt nature the way we conduct our foreign policy: with overwhelming unilateral military force (will the deer will have to wage an asymmetrical war, kidnapping journalists and getting box cutters that fit in hooves?). Maybe there is nothing to really fear here.

But the police, who probably have more of an expertise than 'jesuscyborg' in these matters, disagree. There is talk of a more 'militaristic' approach to policing. Armored vehicles will become more prevalent among law enforcement. AV's will have to become standard for simple robbery cases. As anyone who has been around law enforcement or guns knows, there is a world of difference from a deer rifle and an uzi, if only for the mental state of the person holding it. As the man points out above, guns are 'awesome', and bigger assult rifles in your hands are the equivalent of a hit of PCP in the "I can take on 6 cops" department.

above: what the framers had in mind.

Will the government step in? "I think the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire, so it will expire" said majority leader Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee. "If the president asked me, it would still be no," chirped in Representative Tom DeLay of Texas. President Bush said he supports a renewal and would sign it, but he hasn't pushed very hard. Or at all for that matter. Great job having it both ways; I hope no crackheads jump you with an Uzi on the way to cash all those NRA checks.

"But Mike, even with the ban criminals already have access to these guns if they want them." Maybe my formal background in math logic is working against me, but doesn't then repealing the ban mean even more criminals will have access to them? And worse, with the market flooded won't prices drop, allowing your more broke, desperate and likely to shoot you for a Social Security check variety of criminals larger access to these weapons? And isn't that a bad thing? There is only so much you can argue the tautology "more access will result in more access."

"But Mike, with the weapon ban repealed I can purchase assult rifles to protect my wife, children and three-step ranch home." That is an excellent point, and ginandtacos.com would love to help you out. Now for various PR reasons, the gun industry is keeping it's mouth shut with how much it is salivating at the idea of expanding this market come Monday, so it is hard (and techinically still illegal) to find places online where you can order these guns. And legally (damn Clinton!) guns of this nature that are produced before Monday have to be 'marked' with law enforcement stickering, reducing their sales worth, so we have a few more days before actual production. But come the time, we will have a running list of online ordering sites for the new weapons with which you can "shock and awe" the deer, cheating spouses and late-night gas station attendees of America.

Until then, here are the semi-automatic fruits of what is to come:

From: Erik Martin
To: mike

There comes a point in every man's life when his girlfriend gets off of work at 9 oclock in the pm in Champaign, and he decides he must call mike in Chicago to see if he can get show times for a movie. It is not often that such a movie exists that warrents this type of behavior, but last friday such a cinematic masterpiece was showing.

buy albuterol online buy albuterol no prescription

I have no idea what everyone is talking about with "Sky Captain and the City of Tomorrow." Critics appear to be loving the movie as it is an almost totally digital experience that isn't a complete failure (a la the recent rash of Star Wars prequels and the two Matrix sequels). I'm not cynical enough where I can associate "not a failure" with "good" – even for Hollywood summer releases.

This movie invokes a world of sci-fi serials and images of what people in the 1930s would have thought the future to look like, but it falls flat after that.

I wasn't looking for much, but the two basic rules of making an American adventure popcorn movie is (a) make the lead likable and (b) bring the audience into all the excitement. Jude Law is given a lot of time to look pretty, but doesn't have any sense of anything other than male model about him. Any excitement to be had is sucked away by the digital effects – but not for the reason that most of these movies fail with too many special effects.

The coloring of the film is where effects work has been done.
online pharmacy vibramycin best drugstore for you

Everything has a deep saturation to it; newsrooms are all in brown, skylines blue, etc.
online pharmacy elavil best drugstore for you

The lighting is done in a way that it looks good – technically that's a feat. The highlights don't bleed into the whites, the characters all look sharp, and everything has it's proper hue. I guess some critics were drawn in by this look of vintage sci-fi magazines aged to odd colors in old bookstores – I had the opposite reaction.

All the odd coloring kept me at a distance. With everyone visually at odds to me, I couldn't really feel one thing or the other for anybody. This is fine for the first act or so, but at some point they should have dropped the heavy effects and let the audience actually enjoy the story and characters. The story being kinda dumb doesn't help. Not even Angelina Jolie, in an outfit suitable for female comic book characters and/or sex industry workers, could make this movie interesting.

Skip it.

Work today sucks. These links do not.

1) Dave Kehr's New DVD reviews. I'm a huge fan of Dave Kehr. His reviews for the chicago reader and the chicago tribune from 74-92 still stand strong today. He's a brilliant critic, with just enough theory and humor behind his writing to get you to think about your favorite movies in a brand new way. However, ever since taking off for New York he hasn't found a good venue for himself (outside of Film Comment). He's been reduced to doing bi-weekly profiles for the New York Times; nobody from Chicago should have to take a backseat to Janet Maslin and her nytimes cronies.

Now he has finally found his outlet. Every Tuesday he reviews the latest DVDs coming out. With the way DVDs are now perfectly timed to theaterical releases and other DVDs, he can take jabs at what is playing at the weekly googloplex or form a column of serial reviews around a singular idea. That link has all of his columns (scroll down) for free in the backlog. It's probably the most entertaining and clever writing on movies that is done weekly – Enjoy!

2) William Shatner covering Pulp's Common People. Either you get it or you don't. This is the first track off his upcoming album, Has Been (shorter clips at that website), which will feature duets with Aimee Mann, Ben Folds (also the producer), and Henry Rollins among others.

If you don't get it, but want to try, I'd recommend renting the movie Free Enterprise. The movie stars a very young Eric McCormack, who is no doubt embarrassed as hell that this movie was one of his first starring roles. For those who already get it, Star Trek Series One Season One is now available in stores!

I used to be the biggest Next Gen fan, but as I get older I'm far more into the original series. The Next Gen is very, to put it bluntly, corporate, with all the staff meetings and flat hierarchies and team-building tasks. There's a lot of problem solving through communication between teams and rational dialogue. The original series has a lot more fighting and go-go dancers. The set design is straight out of an Eero Saarinen retrospective, and the special effects are campy beyond belief. And there is almost always someone in a rubber lizard suit chasing people. What world would you rather live in?

1) A Message From White House West. Everyone may have already seen this, but in case you haven't do yourself the favor. You can right click on the quicktime links to save it to your computer, which is a good idea as you'll end up watching this a hundred times.

I'm trying to find video of Farrell at a recent fundraiser for the Natural Resources Defense Council, where he dressed in the flight suit to do the Bush impression. Look at that picture – is Will Farrell funny at everything? And for the love of god, go see Ron Burgandy again already.

2) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou Trailer. I'm so excited for this movie. The setups, framing and costuming (not to mention facial hair) of Wes Anderson's movies grows continuously bizarre. I remember one of my favorite memories of seeing Bottle Rocket was the yellow jumpsuits and bizarre Texas backgrounds – everything was so stylized yet so natural. You used to be able to order those jumpsuits but they they have since been discontinued.

Each subsequent movie has upped the ante in these areas, and this movie is no different. Watch that trailer again. Notice the Zs in the black sweaters. Notice how the acedemic panel ("revenge.") has a 16th century Italian Master type painting for the background and is set in an opera hall – not exactly what I picture when I think academia. When they have the "Bill Murray" title for the credits look at the background of his office setting – there's a whale turning over! Some people criticized Royal Tenenbaums for being too much an excercise in style, but I say bring it on. The actors are top notch and can definitely fill out the amazing scenery. And the facial hair.

side note: It's co-written with Noah Baumbach, whose Kicking and Screaming is easily my favorite of the mid-90s Miramax-funded "people in their mid 20s saying Very Clever Things while Hanging Out" genre. A friend pointed out that because of the 1995 movie's wonderful "I haven't been-to-Prague been-to-Prague" speech (the first clip under K&S here) everyone who has moved to Prague since then – and I know more than a few – should at least admit that they are being a bit of a cliché. And maybe even apologize.

I knew one guy who was reading "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" before moving over to Prague. The movie called doing that a cliché back then, and this guy was doing it in 2002. I told him that the book was a bad guide as the Soviets were no longer occupying the country. I don't think he got it.