Slowly Going Bald

As reported by pretty much everyone on the interwebs, as well as the good folks at PosterWire (who I assume will look kindly on my borrowing their images for educational purposes and duly crediting them), Emma Watson has been given a digital breast job in the Imax ads for this summer's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Take a look:

There are other minor differences between the images, including the way Watson's hair is blowing in the creepy wind, but the focus has understandably been on the fact that the art has slightly inflated her breasts. This is genuinely disturbing, and not merely because Watson is only 17. It's happened several times before.

So, in response to the surprising number of responses I got to my open question about whether women prefer men bearded or clean-shaven (and I have to believe most of the traffic were people who'd come here from Whedonesque the day before and wanted to stick around to see how dumb/weird I got, in which case, here you go), I've decided to post a series of photos to more accurately allow you all to vote on whether I should beard it up or keep it smooth. This is something of a historic day, since I don't often post photos of myself online; every photo of me on Facebook was placed there by someone else. Just thought you should know that.

Anyway, here are the photos. There are more shots of me with a beard because I coincidentally happened to be around digital cameras more often in recent months and years when I was sporting the beard; the number of photos per category isn't meant to sway you either way. The gallery:

The slightly thicker beard, and my sister's eye:

The solid, somehow studious beard:

The thinner, more trimmed, half-drunk beard:

The thinner, oddly happy beard:

No beard, making a stupid face and regretting my bulbous nose:

No beard, happy, being ominously touched on the shoulder:

No beard, wearing a pink shirt and okay with it:

I'm of two minds about the whole thing, since I've recently been told I "pull off the beard better than most men," but also that sporting just the goat makes me "more approachable" and also displays my dimples, which are my face's "best feature" (given the aforementioned bulbous nose and inability to see beyond 3 inches without the aid of corrective lenses, this seems pretty obvious). So, that's pretty much it. Any and all feedback is welcome. Keep in mind that your opinions could very well change my life and shape my future, unless I decide to completely ignore them. Also, "clean shaven" for me means going down to just the half-goatee seen in the last few photos; that's as hairless as I will allow my face to get, since otherwise I look 11 years old and stupid. And just so you know, I'm currently sporting the full goatee (mustache + chin), and it doesn't look half bad.

Now: Vote.

"Battlestar Galactica" has always provided some of the best action on TV, not least because even though it's a sci-fi show, the guns still fire bullets and people still die in horrible ways. Similarly, the special effects are carefully constructed to tell the story but never override it; the beauty of the dogfights is partly that they're not just pretty explosions happening for no reason. The effects are remarkably detailed, too, right down to the "No Step" warning on the Viper cockpits. But the remaining humans have managed to stay mostly out of the way of the Cylons since escaping New Caprica, which would have made it understandable and even acceptable if the two-part finale of the show's third season had been a sprawling war arc that stretched from space to planet. But how did the show wrap up the season? Buckle up, kids:

Courtroom drama.

Of course, even when "Battlestar Galactica" isn't dealing with actual battles, it doesn't exactly slow down, merely trades the kinetic excitement of war for the deeper stories that explore the lives and motivations of the main characters. "A Day in the Life" was fantastic at this, reveling in the details of Admiral Adama's ongoing grief over his wife and the cracks spreading slowly between Chief Tyrol and Cally (but if she's willing to stay with him after he broke her jaw during a hallucinatory daydream, they can probably get through squabbles about who has to feed the baby). After setting up the show's mythology as the season's endgame — Tyrol's connection with the temple, Starbuck's connection with the, um, temple — the show made an abrupt left turn by doing two pretty huge things right in a row: Starbuck died, and Baltar got his trial.

The two-part finale, ominously titled "Crossroads" just to make sure we get that some pretty important crap is about to hit the fan, was nothing less than a 90-minute treatise on ethics and morality and how we define those very concepts that form the bedrock of our society. That's not to say it didn't do other things that TV dramas usually do (and do them pretty damn well). The strength of "Battlestar Galactica" is that it can do both: function as a tautly designed, structurally sound, emotionally resonant drama, and also reach for the bigger issues above the treetops.

It's a loose rule — very loose — that TV dramas thrive on change in a stable environment, while TV comedies thrive on stasis in stable environment. For one of many instances, the creators of "Friends" had to keep coming up with ways to keep Ross and Rachel in order to preserve the stasis of the group. (Chandler and Monica were allowed to hook up and stay together because of the corollary that allows secondary relationships to work out while the show's primary relationship continuously fails and succeeds in fits. This is why Tyrol and Cally are married, but Apollo and Starbuck will always have to find their way back to each other.) "Cheers" was 10 years in a bar, "Seinfeld" almost 10 years in a coffee shop, and both series thrived on the inherent unchangeability of their characters: Jerry is pretty much always going to be a germophobic prick, while George will always manage to repel women. The characters in a comedy stay, fundamentally, at the same emotional level throughout the series; Jim and Pam can try all they want, but it ain't gonna happen. However, characters in good dramas progress through an emotional arc over the sourse of the series, so that while their surroundings stay the same, they become different people as a result of their jobs, relationships, etc. The soapy on-again/off-again nature of TV relationships has a lot more gravity on dramas because they characters aren't simply marking time until the finale, when the leads can finally be together; these characters are actually experiencing all this pain, this heartbreak, and as a result they slowly become different people. Off the top of my head, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" probably did as good a job as any show ever did of showing marked change in its characters from pilot to finale: The lessons learned in one season were applied to the next, which raised the stakes, and so on.

However, the trick is pulling those characters through arcs of change without violating the story's natural feel. Perhaps the most egregious example (again, off the top of my head and glancing intermittently at my DVD shelf) is the horrible way that Aaron Sorkin kept Dana and Casey apart on the second season of "Sports Night" by concocting Dana's Dumbass Dating Plan, which forced Casey to feel ashamed for loving Dana and encouraged him to pursue other women, which of course he did. The characters weren't kept apart as a result of any growth or change they went through or any kind of relationship problems; they were just kept apart.

All of which is a long way to say that "Battlestar Galactica" showed once again how smart it is at making its characters grow while also putting them through the relational ringer. Admiral Adama and President Roslin have been growing closer since the evacuation from New Caprica, which has been kind of cute: They're old, and slow, and Adama will look at Roslin and growl, and Roslin will look back at Adama like a playful librarian, and maybe they'll hold hands, and etc. But in order to keep them from getting together (ew) just yet, the show needed a way to keep them apart, and it did so the best way possible: It established their conflicting ideologies over the fate of Gaius Baltar.

The trial itself was masterful in that it forced Lee to test himself like he never has before. Sure, he's rebelled several times in the past, and was barely on speaking terms with his father when the series began. But his acts of independence have always been in line with a belief that the military he serves can and should be the best force of good for the struggling society that's slowly making its way to the promised land of Earth. He went with Roslin to Kobol because he believed her, not because he stopped believing in the cause. But he turned in his wings and quit the service because he didn't like where Admiral Adama was taking things, especially when Adama expressed his belief that Gaius Baltar didn't deserve a fair trial. Lee hated Baltar as much as everyone else, but he wasn't willing to let his distaste for the man color his loyalty to the ideal of a free society. Lee's impassioned speech on the stand was fantastic: He spoke of salvation, and atonement, and the hypocrisy of letting everyone be covered by Roslin's amnesty except for Baltar, who had been made to suffer. He doesn't attempt to excuse Baltar's crimes, nor does his speech quite falter and slip into the murky areas of relativism, i.e., we all made mistakes, so Baltar can make them, too. No, he's arguing the opposite: We've all been forgiven, and Baltar deserves the same pardon.

Lee's speech won over Admiral Adama, demonstrating the old man's ability to grow and change, to mature. And Adama's vote to acquit Baltar in turn pushed Adama and Roslin farther away in a heartbreakingly natural way. While they will probably work back toward a close friendship in the future — hey, they got through the civil war of the show's second season — it won't be easy. "Battlestar Galactica" doesn't cheat like that; reconciliations here are hard-earned.

All of which makes it so much harded to accept that, for now, the show is gone for a while. Instead of beginning its fourth season this fall, the series isn't returning until January 2008, which is just an ungodly amount of downtime for one of the best dramas on TV. The series deals with politics and religion and what it means to live in a free society and what kind of laws we give ourselves, and it does it better than anybody else in the game. The finale relied on "All Along the Watchtower" as a plot device and as the soundtrack to the impending Cylon attack that filled the episode's final seconds, and the use of the song was an effective way to emotionally tie the fictional world to ours. It's not exactly a new trick — Stephen King also used "Hey Jude" to eerie effect in The Gunslinger — but it still managed to lend the sequence a weight, a sense of foreboding, that drove home the revelation of the identities of four of the remaining Cylon models (about which I'm sure I will write at length over this long, hot, empty summer). It's enough to make me want to dive back into the show on DVD. I'm really going to miss it.

"Well I'm pulling into Cleveland
In a seven-seater tour van.
There's eight of us, so I'm sleeping on the floor.
The guy that plays the banjo
Keeps on handing me the Old Crow,
Which multiplies my sorrow, I can't take it anymore."
— "Doreen," Old 97's

What else to say? Old Crow Medicine Show is a great band, and if you don't know much about them, you should really check them out. Dig the Gillian Welch cameo, too:

"Wagon Wheel," by Old Crow Medicine Show.

Coworker: I actually still have a Millenium Falcon toy that's only half-assembled. It's still in the box.
Me: Wow.
Coworker: It's probably worth some money.
Me: It's probably fun to play with.
Coworker: [Gives me look of confusion, incredulity, and a little shame.]
Me: [Makes engine noise.]

The most recent episode of "Lost," the compelling "The Man From Tallahassee," is probably the best episode of Season 3. While it's clearly better than most of Season 2, which played out like a turgid melodrama stripped of any real consequence, it's also not quite up to the level of Season 1, which barreled along like a runaway train while successfully using a character's individual backstory to deepen the main island plot. Granted, it's not exactly rocket science to psychologically link a given character's past with whatever they're going through on the island — Charlie leaned on drugs and now can't emotionally support himself, or something — but when it cooks, it cooks.

What made the episode so great was Jack's willingness to morally compromise in order to get things done and pursue what he perceived to be the greatest good for the islanders, namely, growing somewhat friendly with the Others and even offering medical care for Ben in order to secure passage off the island on the mythical submarine and possibly get help back in the real world and return later to rescue his friends. Jack has been the (often overly) moral leader of the group since the first year, playing the part of the great physician and watching over the flock of castaways to keep them safe and even journeying into dangerous parts of the island to rescue the one who'd gone astray or been kidnapped. He was an occasionally flat but ultimately noble representative version of all things good and true, which was the center of his beef with Locke: Locke was willing to redefine his worldview after landing on the island, and in fact deemed it necessary to mining the island for all its potential rewards, but Jack held even stronger to the ethical code that had guided him back home.

But Jack, after three seasons of getting jerked around, is finally starting to see the light by going dark. When Kate, Locke, and Sayid attempted to rescue Jack and wound up getting predictably captured in the process, Jack wasn't tossed into lock-up with them but actually given the opportunity to visit Kate and interrogate her. The scene was a fabulous inversion of the trials Jack had gone through while held captive by the Others, and the way he casually dragged up a chair and asked Kate just what she was up to spoke volumes about Jack's enlightened way of looking at things. Kate asked him, "So, you're with them now?" And Jack looked back at her with a mixture of annoyance, defiance, and even mild confusion, saying, "I'm not with anyone, Kate." Jack wasn't simply using the Others until he could escape back to his camp, or even get off the island. He was merely taking advantage of something that would first serve his interests and later, possibly, those of his friends. Locke has always been doing his own thing because of what he felt he owed the island after it magically healed him, which is why his decision to scuttle the sub and keep everyone trapped there, though lamentable, wasn't really surprising. No, the show turned a corner not by digging deeper into Locke's personal demons — though the episode was typical Locke-centric greatness, since Terry O'Quinn is hands-down the best actor on the series — but by finally setting Jack free to see where he goes. By eliminating the hero's strict moral code and having him venture into the surprisingly accepting waters of ethical unaccountability, "Lost" may be poised to have its characters do something I've been wanting them to do for a long time: Grow.

Blah blah Adam Sandler blah blah widower blah blah Cheadle blah blah manipulative tragedy blah blah I will never be able to take seriously in a dramatic context the guy who did "The Beating of a High School Spanish Teacher."

Clickety blah blah terrorism: Clickety-click.

UPDATE: I stand by my analysis that having the two married characters in the film begin to drift apart for no reason is lazy writing. There's always a reason. Always. You wish things were different, or you resent someone and start screwing with their head, or you get tired, or you begin telling yourself that you deserve some kind of better whatever, etc. There's always a reason. Saying there isn't is delusional. Additionally, in Reign Over Me, it's hinted that Alan had some troubles with staying true to his wife in the past after dallying with a patient, but that never pans out. So it's not just lazy writing, it's doubly offensive to actually get within spitting distance of giving this guy some depth, some moral complexity, and then backing off.

Why the title? Because the girl plays mind games. And I don't mean the garden-variety head-screwing most women tend to favor. No, this one's all about role-playing, and costumes, and all sorts of stuff. It's pretty awesome, actually, but it takes a while to get used to it.

We were supposed to go out on Saturday night, but that doesn't mean what you think it means. We never actually go out on a typical date, where I would pick her up and take her to dinner and then maybe a movie or a late drink or just right to drinks, followed by a car ride home and the inevitable sweet embrace of the closed door. No, when Alicia and I go out, we always meet up somewhere. At first I thought this was both weird and juvenile: Why can't we drive together like adults? And what, is she embarrassed of me? That's no way to behave. But it's all part of the act, or what Alicia calls "the play," which means not just a show we're putting on together but the lay of the land, the shots, the score. You know, never open your mouth until you know the play, that sort of thing. And the play for Alicia always involves meeting up at a bar or restaurant and pretending we don't know each other.

She'd picked a place in Westwood, which was an interesting choice, since the streets were sweaty with drunken college students wearing flashing green necklaces and wolfing down ice cream sandwiches from Diddy Riese. I found her, though, but this time she'd drawn two other men into her role-playing, as well as a sizable crowd of onlookers. Even in L.A., she gets noticed. And man, she looked great in this skirt-and-sweater thing, with the wrinkly nose and the spastic hand gestures. She's cute, what can I do.

So I watched her go through her little scene: She submitted to the men, acted subservient, but eventually wound up dominating them. Then, at the height of her control, they turned on her, and she left in tears. It was a moving, complex, and even humorous play, the way things turned out. I couldn't help but applaud, and neither could the spectators.

I couldn't find her afterward, which was a little disappointing, but I chalked it up as another one of her flights of fancy, where we go on a date but don't actually talk to each other or look at each other then entire time. It sounds nuts, but that's what I love about her, you know? Not that we're in love or anything; man, that's a DTR we're definitely not ready to do. But yeah, she's something special. So I swallowed my regret and knew that, though I'd be going home alone, I'd see Alicia again soon. I hope she still has my number. I think she does.

Men with beards: Yes or no?

It's, um, research I'm doing. For a book. I swear.

This review goes out to all you loyal readers, especially the friend with whom I used to sit and ponder: "Ladies of Deja Vu, what must I do to get with you? I got a roll of 20s burning my pants, so here's one little question that I'd like to ask...."

Clickety-click.

Anyway, I also wanna say so long to The Show with Zefrank. I'm sorry I've only been in on it for a few weeks, but I'm glad I found it. For those of you in the ORG, my username is dan c; give me a shout. And now, the final episode:

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I remember what it was like to come out to my friends. I had to do it several times, since it's not like you can just gather everyone in your life in one room and tell them what's going on, so I had to keep bringing it up. I never even talked about it with my parents, though I assume they'll read this. Anyway, I would look at my friends and say, "So, I've got something I need to tell you. Something I've been doing recently." They would look at me and say, not without concern, "Well, what is it?" And then I would clear my throat, look at them, and say:

"I've been watching 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer.' And I love it."

I first came into contact with "Buffy" in the spring of 2003, when I saw the Season 2 DVDs sitting out at a friend's apartment. "Whose are those?" I asked her. "Mine," she said. "Yeah, right," I joked, thinking her far too smart to be involved with what I had prejudicially written off as a juvenile, campy soap opera. But luckily she was walking around the apartment and I didn't say it too loudly and I guess wasn't being too sarcastic (which is something), since my comment didn't really register with her. (Ah, the sweet joy of making a joke and having a woman ignore it.) A few months later, in the middle of that long hot summer, I came across a rerun of "Buffy" on FX one afternoon and decided to stop and see what was going on, since, after all, the girl who'd owned the DVDs really did have good taste. So I settled in and would up watching the Season 5 episode "The Body," and was blown away. I was thrust headlong into a universe that had been expanding for years and forced to play catch-up mighty fast, but that episode was enough to let me know I'd found something good. The show was smart without being smug, funny without sacrificing respectability, and blended action, comedy, drama, loads of pain, and all the other emotions that make for the best TV.

It took me a while to accurately assemble the show's chronology in my head, since I was flat broke and couldn't afford the DVDs, but also didn't want to stop watching the show. So I watched the reruns of Seasons 5 and 6, which is a fascinating way to enter the series: Willow was gay, there was the epic "Once More, With Feeling," and I had to put up with Dawn. Since Joss Whedon's series had ended only a few months earlier, the seventh year hadn't entered syndication yet, so FX returned to Season 1 after the sixth season episodes ended, and I soon caught up on everything. I was living alone in a college town that had been deserted for the summer, and watching "Buffy" was probably one of the two or three only good things that happened during that dry, blistering hell of a season. I felt as if I'd found this world that had been waiting for me, full of humor and pain, where it was okay to be a little cornball in the service of the greater story. The show ran for seven seasons, and each one has its glories¹: The show's core dynamic is flawless in Season 1-3, the high school years; Season 4 is a daring and wonderful transition to college and the real world; Season 5 has some fantastic moments dealing with love, sacrifice, and growing up; Season 6 is a vastly underrated look at the aimlessness of your early 20s and the damage we do to each other; and Season 7, despite the speechifying, manages to be a solid return to form as the show once again finds itself dealing with apocalypse at high school.

I could never pick a favorite season, or episode, or character. I've loved a lot of TV shows in my time, and still do, but "Buffy" is one of the few (along with "Sports Night" and a very few others) that transcends the level of beloved show and becomes an almost tangible presence in my cultural life; basically, the show helps me get over. I can't imagine anyone being able to turn to "Lost" or "Heroes" and find the same kind of emotional comfort and character-derived moments of genuine power like the ones Whedon turned out with stunning regularity. This show has heart, damn it, and that counts for something.

I can't believe how many moments are flooding back to me just banging out this half-assed salute to the show. There's Giles walking into a tree at the end of "Earshot"; that umbrella sequence in "The Prom" that gets me every time; the final shot of "Hush"; the music in "The Gift"; seeing Riley come back married in "As You Were"; Andrew turning off the camera in "Storyteller"; the sheer fun of "Halloween"; the surprising gender reversal in "I Only Have Eyes For You"; the jarring transition from Anya singing to being pinned to the wall, a sword through her chest, in "Selfless"; really, any moment from the gallons of angst the flowed through Season 2. There are so many, and I'm sure I'll get into more of them in this space in the future.

I guess I just felt like getting all that out there because the 10th anniversary of the show's debut recently passed, and a new line of comics written (initially) by Whedon just began, and are serving as a "Season 8" to continue where the TV series left off. And I know now that I'll read every issue, even though Whedon's only writing a few of them. There's just something about these characters I find compelling, an emotional strength of storytelling that outweighs the show's occasional weaknesses. I'll probably cobble together some kind of review of the comics after a while, but that's for later. For now, I just wanted to share my love for a show that got me through the black, that always entertained me, and that influenced the way I watch TV and the stories that affect me. That's all.

^{1. Man, that was an awful pun (for those who caught it). And I swear it was unintentional.}

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This song was written by Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman. Hillman was a founding member of the Byrds, and Parsons joined the band for the classic Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Not long after, Parsons and Hillman were playing together in the Flying Burrito Brothers, and this track appeared on that group's first album, The Gilded Palace of Sin. Parsons is one of my favorite artists; I could listen to G.P./Grievous Angel all day. The song's been covered several times, most notably by Uncle Tupelo, but this is a pretty amazing version:

"Sin City," by Steve Earle, Gillian Welch, and David Rawlings.

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The main problem with youth groups is one of ontology: Namely, the youth group isn't really the youth group unless it's assembled, and that almost never happens in an official capacity unless there's a trip involved. Sure, many or most of the members might come together on a particular Sunday morning or Wednesday evening, but that's a matter of routine. And, yes, it's common for the members to hang out together as a group in a distinctly secular capacity, like the time my youth group got together to go see American Pie, after which a couple guys who were sitting near our group latched onto us outside and picked up two of our single female members, making the entire evening a pretty good example of things the youth minister doesn't want you to do at all, especially if his name's attached to it, hence our hanging out as friends and not some kind of bizarre group of emmissaries for the church. Of course, the American Pie night wound up being a bust long-term for the girls in question: One of the guys turned out to be a local pot dealer with no small amount of paranoia, and the fact that he coincidentally dealt to one of the male members of the youth group is just one of those freakish twists that makes you think P.T. Anderson really knows what he's talking about. Anyway, once the girl found out he was holding, they broke up.

But back to the thing about trips: Youth groups go to all kinds of conventions, camps, and what have you throughout the year, and the process usually entails loading everyone up in a trusty van — again, completely absent of any mouth-to-body hanky-panky — and driving to a nearby major city and crashing in a hotel for a night or two and in general throwing every last ounce of decent behavior right out the baptistry window in pursuit of the kind of low-grade trouble that fuels young men's very being. Some examples of said screwing around:

• When I was 12, there was an event in downtown San Antonio, which the youth minister must've viewed as a plus, since we wouldn't have to lodge anywhere, just drive downtown every day and spout off randomly memorized verses before collecting some cheap ribbon we would throw away later and heading for home. Of course, being in 7th grade and hanging out with other boys my age, we were flabbergasted at the relative amount of freedom we had to roam the Riverwalk in the free time we were able to carve out, not to mention the fact that there were girls everywhere. At 12, your body is producing so much testosterone you can't see straight, and you don't even want to. Girls drive every word, thought, action. Basically, it's the same as your 20s, only without cars.

Which is probably why we, being 12 years old and thinking we were pretty much as good as it gets, went to Hooters for lunch one day. Just walking in was some ultimate combination of defiance of our moral leaders and acceptance of the carnal desires we were howling to let loose: They were like fire shut up in our bones; we were weary of holding them in; indeed we could not. I remember loving it there, even though the waitresses were probably either annoyed or slightly creeped out by our little band of horndogs. And in retrospect, they probably weren't even objectively hot or anything; this was, after all, downtown San Antonio.

• There was an event in Austin when I was in high school, either a junior or a senior. It was toward the end. I remember roaming the streets of downtown with a few other guys, wandering through the UT campus, and eventually coming across a Scientology center, at which point the leader of our group suggested we go in and take the test these people were offering us. And being very, very bored — and broke — we did. I left before I found out my results, though, since we were around 24th and Guadalupe and I had to be at 6th and Congress in a very short time, so I jogged my fat ass back through town, which isn't exactly easy in flip-flops. I almost didn't want to make it back on time for whatever lame event I was supposed to "compete" in (they said it was a competition, but everyone still got a plaque or ribbon or some retarded certificate saying they'd done their due diligence), and had I been older, I would've just blown it off. But I made it back, and performed, and didn't really care what happened. I didn't even care about hanging out with this blonde I'd been minorly obsessing over, which was probably just as well, since the sight of me showing up sweat-drenched and heatstrokey probably wouldn't have sent her libido into overdrive. I just went in and did what the adults wanted me to do, and hated myself every moment.

I wonder if the adults ever know how little we cared about those trips, or the church-as-corporation aspect of them. I guess not.

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"Because hubris always wins in the end. The Greeks taught us that."

Clickety-click.

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Many good things happening over at Pajiba:

The daily trade round-up.

There's also: Jeremy's look at Kieslowski's Trois Couleurs trilogy. I'd give you an excerpt, except I don't want to give you just some acontextual nugget of brilliance. Just go read it and see for yourself.

There's also : Dustin's real-time review of Open Water 2. A taste:

27:00: Wouldn’t it be awesome if the infant crawled out of the cabin and let down the ladder and the movie ended? I could really go for some wings right now.

Yeah, I figured you'd like that.

And: The latest edition of What Pajiba's Reading. We like books. You should, too.

Plus: The TV Whore keeps watching awful shows so you don't have to.

Last but not least, a little something to see you through to the weekend. This is probably the best Carl's Jr. commercial I've ever seen, even though it took me at least a dozen times seeing it to remember what it was they were actually advertising. Hell, I barely remembered it was for Carl's Jr. at the beginning. Anyway, enjoy:

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Continuing, I guess, with the broad but definite theme of female country singers that make me all wibbly, here's another great song from a great album:

"Virginia, No One Can Warn You," by Tift Merritt.

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As I've already indicated, growing up in a South Texas youth group adds considerable confusion to the normal adolescent yearnings. It was probably in the spirit of answering those yearnings that, when I was in high school, our youth minister — an unnervingly energetic man in his early 30s with a wife and kids — arranged for our youth group to go on a weekend retreat wherein we would follow curriculum provided by the folks at True Love Waits. For those who didn't grow up in either the South or Colorado Springs, True Love Waits is an organization dedicated to keeping Christian teens from screwing their brains out like their hormones are telling them to. (For what it's worth, I have no idea if the program actually works; the teens I knew who actually left high school with their virginities intact did so out of circumstance, not a higher moral calling. Teens think about sex, food, and sex.) So anyway, we all piled in a van — this time careful not to touch each other — and headed to a dirt-blasted waste of a campground in the middle of nowhere.

One evening, the youth minister and his wife held a kind of panel session, where we, the sexually inexperienced, could submit anonymous questions to them, the sexually knowledgable. Many of the questions were pretty predictable: One guy (it had to be a guy) asked about the moral/spiritual implications of, um, onanistic pursuits, to which the youth minister, not wanting to start a mutiny, gave his grudging and qualified approval. But eventually things got downright weird.

I don't remember how the subject came up; it was 10 years ago, and to be honest, I've done a fair amount of work to bury specific moments like this one. But at one point the youth minister began to wax poetic about the kind of unforced errors that can plague recently married couples who, either from having grown up in somewhat conservative households or just out of a reluctance to do a little research beforehand, find themselves in a bit of a wedding-night pickle. On the topic of lube — and it was here that my fragile teen mind began to crumble under the unfortunate weight of the mental image of my youth minister and his wife in coital repose — my youth minister cautioned us not to use too much, or else things might "become like a Slip N Slide." I believe he even extended his arms briefly when making this joke, much like the guy in the photo above, though that detail could just be my subconscious screwing with me. It's happened before. Anyway, what little information I'd managed to retain from the disastrous Q&A went pretty much straight to hell because all I could see was my youth minister and his wife in what had to have been a small kiddie pool's worth of KY.

The rest of the night was pretty much a wash, too. The girls in the group gravitated toward my youth minister's wife and began sharing their own horror stories from the private hell that must be the female puberty experience (not that the male side of things is a cakewalk, but still, everyone knows we got off way light). The girls invaded the cabin that had been assigned to the boys and began to sit around and have a lengthy confessional in which they each talked about their individual tales of getting their periods in the school cafeteria, etc., as if finding the horrible remnants of their burgeoning womanhood smeared into a tacky paste on their seats was like any other story worthy of cocktail-party reminiscence. The other guys and I stood outside for what felt like hours, throwing the football in the crisp evening and wondering when the hell they would tire of their mutual shame circle and let us go to bed.

He and his wife left a few years later.

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It's the show with zefrank, and it's really worth checking out. How did I kill time at work before this?

Anyway, here are some sample clips to get you started. If the videos get all wonky and won't load, just refresh the page:

Now go play.

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Harry:... That girl tonight, man, I'm tellin' you, she had this ... quality, like ... like the girl in high school, you know the one you could never have? The one that still haunts you?

Gay Perry: I had that. (Beat.) Bobby Mills.

Harry: (Beat.) You should, um, track him down. I got five bucks says you could still get him.

Gay Perry: That's funny. I got a ten says, "Pass the pepper." And a couple quarters that do harmony on "Moonlight in Vermont."

Harry: Huh?

Gay Perry: Talking money.

Harry: Talking monkey?

Gay Perry: Yes, a talking monkey. Ugly sucker. Traveled here from the future, only says "ficus."

— From Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which you should really all see, if you haven't already.

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Holy smackerel. Alice Eve, where have you been? Our birthdays are only a few months apart, I'm a good listener, and I just got a raise. Anything else you wanna know, just email me.

Anyway: Clickety-click.

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As loyal readers — all seven of you — may have noticed, I have deleted a post from earlier in the week wherein, in a whimsical and honestly pretty entertaining tone, I recounted a legendary story from my youth group days as a bewildered teen in South Texas and how two of my peers had engaged in some low-level sexual hijinks in the back of a van on the way to church camp. I have since received mountainstwo emails advising me of the factual errors in my story and requesting either a correction or full retraction of same, and since the missives themselves were from the once-horny parties at the center of the story — she righteously pissed off, he merely bemused — I felt obliged to comply with their wishes and delete the post. I was a little surprised to find that my (I thought) harmless ramblings had stirred up all kinds of crazy ranging from coast to coast, though I take that more as a sign of the power of gossip as opposed to any indication of my global popularity. (Although, if the map on the left side of this page is to be trusted, I'm currently blowing up across the continent.)

Anyway, sexual hijinks were indeed part of the story, but in a different manner than I previously implied. But that tale grew with the telling, and was something of a minor legend among my compatriots in those depressingly formative years, and for what it's worth, I almost prefer the myth to the history. Nevertheless, I wanted you all to know that I got it wrong, and I won't actually be filling you in on what actually happened between the couple, but instead let you fill in the images for yourself. It wasn't even that big a deal, but you'd almost never know it to be on the receiving end of all this.

Finally: I've got more harrowing tales of church-based pubescent angst coming up in the future — including a kind of Q&A panel session with the youth minister and his wife that scarred me for years — but that's for another day. For now, simply know that I was incorrect in my previous story, and will endeavor in the future to hew more closely to the facts, whatever they may be.

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Just wanted to say thanks.

Sincerely,

Dan

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I'm not even sure how often I'll do this, but it seems like as good a time as any to start slowly sharing the gospel accoring to alt-country with the rest of the world. I don't even know where to begin, so I picked this one at random. Great song, great performer:

"Back to Me," by Kathleen Edwards.

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"You know what would really make them the greatest generation? If they would hurry up and die and give me a refund on my Social Security payments."

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Today's installment: The necessity of quotes.

To borrow my own definition: "A nerd is someone whose intellect has at one point proven a barrier to social interaction; a geek is someone with an unhealthy focus on or obsession over any given band/TV show/created work. The two groups often overlap, but are, indeed, separate groups." You wanna be a geek? You need to know the quotes.

True geek devotion to a particular area is proven by demonstrating a knowledge of that area's arcana. It doesn't matter whether it's knowing the name of Uncle Tupelo's drummer¹ or what "TIE" stands for in TIE fighter²; you have to know the little details, and often, that means quotes.

Quotes are the key to bonding with strangers. Trotting out your ability to instantly recognize a movie or TV show from the most random or obscure bit of dialogue is like displaying your geek badge: "I know this. I am this much of a geek. Maybe even a loser. I know this."

I'm not just a geek, but a nerd-geek, meaning that in addition to being a film geek and book geek and music geek, a lot of my obsessions happen to be those related to, well, nerds. (There are other geeks, too, like sports geeks. But since I don't need to know the name of Ferguson Jenkins unless we're talking about the career crossovers of Janel Moloney and Aaron Sorkin, I'm happy to leave the sports alone.) This means that I swing a pretty big stick when it comes to nerd-geek quotes. There are at least a dozen Star Wars quotes I say on a regular basis³; I can recite the opening narration to "Quantum Leap"⁴; I have known since age 8 that you can't enter warp inside a solar system, though they did it once just for dramatic effect. I'm a geek. Those of you not laughing or crying out of pity should know that I've pretty much come to grips with it, though.

So, what can you do about it? Well, if you want to be a geek, you need to know facts and quotes, the more obscure the better. You won't impress anybody with the hackneyed quotes from Seasons 3-8 of "The Simpsons," which are now practically imprinted on a newborn's subconscious. ("You know those guitars that are, like, double guitars?") It's not enough to know the characters or places or objects; you need to know if, say, she'll make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. You can't just know the name of the main character; you have to know which of the Twelve Colonies he hails from, and the names of his dead son, ex-wife, and father⁵. You smell that? That smell of pointless knowledge and musty apartment air and free weekends and burned Hot Pockets? Congrats; you're one step closer to becoming a geek.

I'm a leaf on the wind; watch how I soar.

I'll leave you with this. It seems appropriate (dialogue NSFW):

^{1. Mike Heidorn.}

2. Twin ion engine. Duh.

3. Favorites: "Didn't we just leave this party?", when arriving at the office; "Just like Beggar's Canyon back home," when gliding onto the 101 northbound at Cahuenga; "She'll hold together. ... Hear me, baby? Hold together," when encouraging the car to make it home in one piece.

4. Call me up and I'll prove it. Anytime.

5. Caprica; Zak; Carolanne; Joseph.

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10. No one talks very much.

9. What little conversation takes place is limited to meaningless small talk.

8. Neither party is as interested in the small talk as they pretend to be.

7. The women are vaguely foreign, and older than they appear from a distance.

6. You're paying a woman to touch you in a way that is at once both highly personal and ultimately impersonal.

5. It's best to keep your hands at your sides unless otherwise ordered.

4. Bald spots are generally ignored.

3. Tips are never mentioned but always expected.

2. There's a constant stream of background music meant to put you at ease.

1. No matter how much you might want to, it's never a good idea to blow it in your pants.

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• "A lifetime of naturally unathletic abilities has contributed to your skin's natural alabaster sheen, which I find intoxicating."

• "Tell me again about how you played 'Metal Gear Solid' on an endless loop when you were a freshman in college."

• "Wow, you bought bootleg DVDs of the original Star Wars trilogy that were ported over from the remastered laserdiscs. Take me hard."

• "Let's order Chinese. I'll pay."

• "The fact that you pitted out that old shirt merely means you can achieve a high level of focus during stressful situations, and is in no way gross or weird."

• "I read somewhere that the name Daniel is Hebrew for 'legendary cocksman.'"

• "The fact that you read The Hobbit in elementary school makes me extremely hot. Let's do it and put it on YouTube."

• "I made you some cornbread. Just because."

• "Who needs ambition when you can grow a nice goatee? Let's go to the movies."

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Friday, Feb. 23:

I can barely bring myself to come up with another list of Oscar predictions. I did this last year, but this year my heart just isn't in it. It's not that I suddenly realized that the correlation between cinematic quality and awards recognition is tenuous at best, and usually outright incompatible; I've felt that way for a while now. No, there are several reasons, mainly this: The awards aren't so much won as bought. Sure, every now and then a dark horse comes along and dominates, as The Silence of the Lambs did in 1991. But for the most part, Oscar recognition is the result of a long and arduous PR campaign meant to sell the Oscar voters (and the public at large) on the worthiness of the film in question. Miramax didn't just luck out when it came to distributing Oscar winners in the 1990s; the Weinsteins shamelessly sold their films as Oscar winners, and then sat back and watched the self-fulfilling prophecy fall into place. That's what was so shocking about Crash's victory last year over Brokeback Mountain; Paul Haggis' film wasn't just the lesser of the two, but Ang Lee's film had been so flawlessly marketed — with playdates platforming out a week at a time leading up to the Oscars, not to mention its branding as part of a national movement — that it was literally supposed to win.

I'm making two predictions this year, a main one and a "dark horse" selection that's meant to hedge my bets or just let me be a little hopeful for upsets. Last year I hit 18 of 24 only making one prediction per category, and I'm bound to do at least that well (I hope) by spreading out the guesses. I'm also playing two ballots in the office Oscar pool instead of one, in hopes of taking home some cash. Then again, I live and work in L.A. with some horribly well-informed coworkers competing against me in the pool; if this were Texas, I would clean up, but as it is, I'll probably have to settle again for a four-way tie for fourth.

Sunday, Feb. 25:

Well, it seems I'm getting my ass kicked in all new ways. Pride goeth before a great loss in the office pool.

This year I went for 19 of 24 categories, only one better than I did last year. I'm a little surprised that I managed a 79% accuracy rate this year even by making two guesses per category, but then again, this is far from an exact science. Sometimes I was happy to proven wrong: I liked seeing Melissa Etheridge win for original song for An Inconvenient Truth over the bloated, melismatic crapfest that is Dreamgirls. And I was happy to see Thelma Schoonmaker win for editing The Departed; she's worked with Scorsese for years, and his films aren't the same thing without her skill informing their relationship as director and editor. But I was disappointed with several other outcomes, most notably Alan Arkin's win for Little Miss Sunshine instead of Mark Wahlberg's work in The Departed. Sure, Arkin's performance as the lecherous grandpa (He's horny! He's profound! He's dead!) was entertaining, and the cast still managed to successfully pull off the prefab quirk of the comedy, and Arkin deserves some of that credit. But whereas Little Miss Sunshine was the ready-made indie-that-could — funny, sad, sweet, but still ready-made — Scorsese's fierce, sweeping crime drama contained the year's best everything: Story, performances, even the atmosphere. (Who could forget that gorgeous shot of the mobile of mirrors as Leonardo DiCaprio pursued Matt Damon over the wet streets and down that alley?) Wahlberg's ferocious but loyal cop was an integral part of Scorsese's film, which is fantastically, beautifully, wonderfully beyond its inspiration, the Hong Kong flick Infernal Affairs. It was fitting that Scorsese was presented his award by Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas, the fellow kings of his era, the first kids to blast out of film school and change the face of American cinema. But Coppola has been phoning it in since Jack, and Lucas is a brilliant set designer and conceptual artist who long ago lost whatever connection he had to human emotion and his ability to write from the heart. Spielberg continues to grow as an artist, yet while he tackles the daddy and Holocaust issues that have colored his work from the beginning, Scorsese has become the most truly American filmmaker of the bunch. The Departed isn't just an adaptation of another film, or even a crime story, but a film that's relentlessly American, pulsing with the homegrown hate and love and despair and fratricide of the spacious boroughs and blood-stained waves of grain. A few of my coworkers have alternately referred to Departed as a "guy movie" or "popcorn actioner" (thus casting eternal doubt on their ability to actually discern good films from bad), but they're missing the point. From Jack Nicholson's coke-fueled Caligula to DiCaprio's lonely yearning to find a father in Martin Sheen, The Departed really was the best film of the year.

Anyway, on to my predictions and the winners:

Best Picture

Prediction: The Departed.

Dark Horse: Little Miss Sunshine.

Winner: The Departed.

Best Actor

Prediction: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland.

Dark Horse: Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond.

Winner: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland.

Best Actress

Prediction: Helen Mirren, The Queen.

Dark Horse: Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada.

Winner: Helen Mirren, The Queen.

Best Supporting Actor

Prediction: Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls.

Dark Horse: Mark Wahlberg, The Departed.

Winner: Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine.

Best Supporting Actress

Prediction: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls.

Dark Horse: Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine.

Winner: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls.

Best Director

Prediction: Martin Scorsese, The Departed.

Dark Horse: Clint Eastwood, Letters From Iwo Jima.

Winner: Martin Scorsese, The Departed.

Best Original Screenplay

Prediction: Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine.

Dark Horse: Paul Haggis, Iris Yamashita, Letters From Iwo Jima.

Winner: Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Prediction: William Monahan, The Departed.

Dark Horse: Sacha Baron Cohen et al.,Borat.

Winner: William Monahan, The Departed.

Best Cinematography

Prediction: Emmanuel Lubezki, Children of Men.

Dark Horse: Guillermo Navarro, Pan's Labyrinth.

Winner: Guillermo Navarro, Pan's Labyrinth.

Best Film Editing

Prediction: Clare Douglas, Christopher Rouse, Richard Pearson, United 93.

Dark Horse: Stephen Mirrione, Douglas Crise, Babel.

Winner: Thelma Schoonmaker, The Departed.

Best Art Direction

Prediction: Eugenio Caballero, Pilar Revuelta, Pan's Labyrinth.

Dark Horse: John Myhre, Nancy Haigh, Dreamgirls.

Winner: Eugenio Caballero, Pilar Revuelta, Pan's Labyrinth.

Best Costume Design

Prediction: Sharen Davis, Dreamgirls.

Dark Horse: Consolata Boyle, The Queen.

Winner: Milena Canonero, Marie Antoinette.

Best Original Score

Prediction: Alexandre Desplat, The Queen.

Dark Horse: Gustavo Santaolalla, Babel.

Winner: Gustavo Santaolalla, Babel.

Best Original Song

Prediction: Henry Krieger, Scott Cutler, Anne Preven, "Listen," Dreamgirls.

Dark Horse: Henry Krieger, Siedah Garrett, "Love You I Do," Dreamgirls.

Winner: Melissa Etheridge, "I Need to Wake Up," An Inconvenient Truth.

Best Makeup

Prediction: David Marti, Montse Ribe, Pan's Labyrinth.

Dark Horse: Aldo Signoretti, Vittorio Sodano, Apocalypto.

Winner: David Marti, Montse Ribe, Pan's Labyrinth.

Best Sound Mixing

Prediction: Dreamgirls.

Dark Horse: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Winner: Dreamgirls.

Best Sound Editing

Prediction: Letters From Iwo Jima.

Dark Horse: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Winner: Letters From Iwo Jima.

Best Visual Effects

Prediction: Superman Returns.

Dark Horse: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Winner: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Best Animated Feature

Prediction: Cars.

Dark Horse: Happy Feet.

Winner: Happy Feet.

Best Foreign-Language Film

Prediction: Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico).

Dark Horse: The Lives of Others (Germany).

Winner: The Lives of Others (Germany).

Best Documentary (Feature)

Prediction: An Inconvenient Truth.

Dark Horse: Deliver Us From Evil.

Winner: An Inconvenient Truth.

Best Documentary (Short Subject)

Prediction: Two Hands.

Dark Horse: The Blood of Yingzhou District.

Winner: The Blood of Yingzhou District.

Best Short Film (Animated)

Prediction: The Little Matchgirl.

Dark Horse: Lifted.

Winner: The Danish Poet.

Best Short Film (Live Action)

Prediction: West Bank Story.

Dark Horse: Binta and the Great Idea.

Winner: West Bank Story.

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1. The title's punctuation takes some getting used to. To be honest, it's kinda distracting.

2. One of my favorite lines: "This city has hot Latin flavor up to its nuts."

Anyway: Clickety-click.

In completely unrelated news, this is highly entertaining.

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This one is dedicated to my friend and traveling companion from my youth through today. He and I grew up together on the names of unknown actors, and that's what this list is meant to celebrate. (We also saw Croupier on the big screen, meaning we loved Clive Owen way back in the day. So there.) This one's for you, little brother Collins, and everyone who loves movies. So here it is:

The Man Who Wasn't There: A Salute to Character Actors.

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"Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" has by now established itself as perhaps Aaron Sorkin's weakest work (well, except for Malice). But it's certainly the weakest of his TV series, falling well behind "Sports Night" and "The West Wing" in terms of character development, creativity, storylines, and everything else. Sorkin is even up to his old tricks when it comes to dropping storylines whenever they begin to bore him; wasn't the "Studio 60" set supposed to be redesigned, like, months ago?

But the biggest change is perhaps in Sorkin's newfound cynicism for his characters that believe in God. Of course, Sorkin's distaste for zealots is hardly new; the pilot episode of "The West Wing" revolved around Josh almost getting fired for pissing off the religious right, and when the smug representatives of that movement came to the White House, the president smacked them down by quoting the Ten Commandments. This set two important precedents for the show: First, the religious right was going to be a pretty standard whipping boy for Sorkin's idealistic Bartlet administration. Second, Bartlet would be a man of well-reasoned, compassionate faith.

Sorkin's diatribes against narrow-minded religious extremists first appeared on "Sports Night," as in (for one of many instances) Casey McCall's on-air insults aimed at Jerry Falwell. Attacking the right-wing nutbars that are destroying the public faith of a lot of Americans is fine and dandy, it really is. However, the important thing on "The West Wing" wasn't just Bartlet's strong stance against the religious right, but his balancing that with his own yearning, personal faith. In the show's mythology, Bartlet minored in theology at Notre Dame, and his struggle to reconcile his faith in God with the horrible choices he faces as president added tremendous depth to the first few seasons of "The West Wing." The first season's "Take This Sabbath Day" sho