December 2002

You know that “low-budget” Hollywood film called The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers? Well, it’s under-fire on a Two Towers protest site for being insensitive toward the tragic event of September 11th. That’s right, Two Towers must be an allusion to the World Trade Center towers. This claim is simply ludacrious. The people running this web site should be flamed so badly that they get 500 e-mails a day until their ISPs shut down their accounts.

Okay, yes, September 11th was tragic. I think most people agree with that, but to claim that a book written long before Osama and his minions learned how to fly is somehow related to the event is garbage.

There is a quote on the web site that just cracks me up. Here goes:

“We believe that Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema’s actions are in fact hate speech. The movie is intentionally being named The Two Towers in order to capitalize on the tragedy of September 11. Clearly, you cannot deny the fact that this falls under hate speech. We believe that if they will not willingly change the name, the government should step in to stop the movie’s production or to force a name change.”

You people can’t be serious. Please tell me you’re not serious. This web site has to be shut down for the sake of humanity.

Well I woke up around 8:00 this morning and we opened presents to the sounds of the Rat Pack singing Christmas tunes. We then had cinnamon rolls (thanks Gates family) along with scrambled eggs. My mom had made toffee the night before and I swear it tastes better a day aged.

My Christmas bounty list

• Three shirts and a pair of pants from Banana Republic.
• A Kenneth Cole: Reaction black jacket.
• Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones (Widescreen) DVD.
• Michael Crichton. Prey.
• A nice little check from my grandparents.
• Best Buy gift card (just in time for tomorrow’s sale).
• Más clothes, including a Gap button-up shirt and a cotton long-sleeve shirt.
• Lots of other great stuff that is too numerous to mention.

By the way, I think the funniest thing of the morning was watching my dog, Blizzard, chase her new toy, a mallard duck squeaky toy that has fake fur on its back. The duck even sounds like a real duck when it squeaks.

Thanks to everyone and merry Christmas!

In case you didn’t know, Trent Lott, the former is in a world of pain. It really hurts when Aaron McGruder disses you, since he does it so well. I opened up the Chronicle this morning and he ran a great Trent Lott commentary in his latest Boondocks strip.

Also, Wired News ran a fun feature story today on how Trent Lott’s latest slip-up is currently the most popular weblog discussion topic. I found that the most interesting quandry is that since he doesn’t know what a weblog is, do you think he is offended by the discussion? My guess is probably not until he realizes that “bloggers” are other Americans dissing him. Instapundit.com got mentioned in the article, and their coverage of the Lott crisis is okay but not the best I’ve seen. If you have a better feature weblog, please post a link. My current favorite Lott basher is Andrew Sullivan, but he’s on vacation at the moment.

Honestly, poor old Trent deserves to be dissed. First off, he likes Strom Thurmond. Secondly, he shoots his racist mouth off. Finally, he then pathetically tries to apologize on BET, which was just sad. See the McGruder strip for more info on that slip-up. I wonder what jokes Jay Leno is going to come up with about him. I haven’t been watching the Tonight Show lately.

The Boondocks cartoon strip featured in the article comes from uComics, which posts every daily funny.

I managed to get my hands on a taping of the Sigur Rós show from November 23 at the Warfield. It is awesome. The Sigur Rós news web site has some pictures to go along with the show. Their new single, “Vaka,” is the opening track, which is just plain brilliant. I hope their latest effort, (), at least gets recognized at the Grammy’s this year, since last year they got totally snubbed. I think they are one of the most innovative bands in the music scene right now.

The next time they come around on tour, either in L.A. or in San Francisco, I’m buying tickets. Hopefully by then they still won’t be on TRL. If you are interested in getting a copy of the show, try the Sigur Rós web site and I’m sure a fanatic will help you with a tape trade.

The Washington Post has an article entitled “Free Speech — Virtually” on its web site that warns webloggers to watch what they say on their journals. It is an article that focuses on what not to say about your job on your journal. The Post notes, “The most flippant of remarks published two years ago could broadcast something a company doesn’t want competitors or potential clients to know.” That’s not a big surprise, but a lot of bloggers I know post hastefully (I have done so myself) and the results can be very, very bad.

I think it’s safe advice to say that it’s not a good idea to talk about your job or your love life online at all. Data mining is a big business and there are always people out there looking to burn you. Don’t set yourself up.

Thanks to Slashdot for posting a link to the article in its feature, “Are Blogging and Unemployment Related?.”

Yesterday I went with Will and Aaron to see Gangs of New York, the latest film by Martin Scorcese. It was intense. The film is nearly three hours long and it is chock full of sex and violence. This is not a movie for your eight year old. However, in this film the violence was necessary.

Gangs of New York is about the Irish immigration during the Civil War period. The Irish were as despised as African Americans by much of the population. In the movie, this stringent nativisim is characterized by Bill the Butcher, the villain of the film. Leo DiCaprio plays Amsterdam Vallon, a young Irishman who seeks revenge on Bill the Butcher for the murder of his father, Priest Vallon. Priest Vallon is played by Liam Neeson, who is excellent in his short-lived role.

The movie takes place in the Five Points, an impoverished neighborhood in New York. It is a neighborhood packed with Irish, Poles, and American “natives.” A number of street gangs arise out of need for self-defense and protection. Amsterdam’s gang, the Dead Rabbits, is a thorn in the side of Bill the Butcher, who cries whenever he sees a “poor, helpless rabbit murdered.” The main conflict of the movie is the bad blood between Amsterdam and Bill the Butcher.

I thought Gangs of New York was an excellent film, one of the five best of the year. If you need something to do this holiday weekend, go see Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Gangs of New York. You won’t be disappointed.

Related Links:

• Gangs of New York: Official Site
• IMDb: Gangs of New York
• Yahoo! Movies: Gangs of New York

I’ve switched the whole site over to Dreamhost and it will take a little while to get everything running smoothly since the domain name has to be switched over to the Dreamhost IP. This can take up to 72 hours so if the site isn’t working over the next few days, it’s probably the IP address switch. At least Movable Type is now running under MySQL and running without a hitch. Dreamhost is a heck of a lot faster than Hostway by the way. So far, service has been good. I’m liking the change.

I’m in the process of changing web hosts from Hostway to Dreamhost. Hostway has great service but it’s too expensive for my current budget. Dreamhost is half the price but offers more of the features I need, including subdomains and multiple FTP user accounts. Hopefully the whole transition goes smoothly.

What a crazy weekend. I came home from UCLA on Thursday to a terrible storm which hasn’t yet stopped. My fence blew down on Friday and my dad still isn’t sure whether or not shingles blew off the roof. The trees banged against the house all day on Saturday and last night we lost power at 12:30. I was walking downstairs to go to bed right when the power cut off. I was going to brush my teeth but I had to feel my way back upstairs to find a flashlight.

What a fun experience.

I’ve been reading Walter Mosley’s A Little Yellow Dog, and for half of today I had to read it by candlelight. Candlelight may be romantic during dinner but it sure is a pain when you’re trying to read. The power came back on today around 5:30 thankfully. It has finally stopped raining but it is supposed to pick back up tomorrow. Joy.

In an amazing finish, the UCLA Men’s Soccer team defeated Stanford 1-0 in the NCAA national championship. Aaron Lopez scored the winning goal off of an indirect kick placed by Ryan Futagaki. The goal was scored in the 88th minute, which was simply shocking. Stanford expected the game to go into overtime and was totally disoriented in the last two minutes of the game. The Bruins were so exicted that they started celebrating with three seconds still left on the clock. The crowd was made up of mostly UCLA fans with some Stanford fans interspersed, so the crowd noise in the last minute of the game was intense.

What a storybook ending.

This is the first championship that UCLA during my time as a Bruin. The Women’s Soccer team came very close to winning this year as well as Men’s Water Polo. Go Bruins!!

ESPN’s praise of UCLA Men’s Soccer:

Bruins ‘One’ Again

Stanford will have to wait until next season to try and end its recent skid against UCLA. Aaron Lopez scored off a free kick from Ryan Futagaki with 1:02 left in regulation as the Bruins clinched their fourth NCAA Division I men’s soccer championship with a 1-0 victory Sunday in Dallas. The Cardinal lost twice to their Pac-10 rivals during the regular season — and both were nail-biting 1-0 decisions.

I must say, the Chronicle covered the story nicely in its feature. It is a very Stanford-biased paper, since most of its readers lean toward Berkeley or Stanford, but it definitely tipped its hat for the Bruins.

By the way, a thank you goes out to ESPN for the nice photos. I hope you guys don’t mind too much.

I surfed over to ESPN.com’s College Sports section and noticed that UCLA Men’s Soccer is the top story of the moment. Their blurb is in the full text of the article. ESPN also has a nice write-up of the game.