Going Again

Back To New Zealand
Where the sheep miaow and they do miaow well... hang on, that's not how 'Stone Henge' goes, but you get the vibe.

I'm heading out with somee folks from Japan to do some location scouting in NZ for a ninja movie. There are mountains of problems to be solved, but at least they're moving. The director will be coming out in the second week, which should be interesting.
Stay tuned for more announcements from me.

Gone Already
It's official: The 2007 Edition of the Yankees plain suck.

i wish I had answers for you. The Yankees are playing so poorly that I’m not sure who you can blame. Torre met with them for nearly an hour before the game and nothing came of it. They had a long pre-game workout. They have tried changing the lineup. They have tried pretty much everything.
Right, except firing somebody. At some point that will be next. But this team has bigger problems than its manager. A lot of players are getting old at the same time and no manager alive can change that.

They are the recent dynasty's answer to the 1977-78 Yankees' decline in 1982. As Graig Nettles said of the 1982 team, this team got old awfully quick.

The Rocket will be arriving too late. Here's another thing you might want to look at:

1. Denial - It’s only 20 games. It’s only 30 games. It’s only 40 games. Look at their pythagorean record…

2. Anger/Resentment - Joe Torre needs to be fired. Bobby Abreu sucks. Robinson Cano sucks. Johnny Damon sucks. Jason Giambi sucks. Kyle Farnsworth sucks…

3. Bargaining - If the Yankees can just get to .500, then when Hughes and Clemens are in the rotation with Moose, Wang, and Pettitte they’ll be unstoppable…

4. Depression - The Yankees fall to 21-28 with their loss to the Toronto Blue Jays tonight.

5. Acceptance - The 2007 Yankees are a bad baseball team. With their payroll and their performance they’ll go down in history as one of the biggest flops ever…

I finally accepted the truth tonight. The 2007 Yankees are not going to make the playoffs. I’ll still watch the games whenever I can, and I will still root for them to win every night, but I have no expectations any more. Some of my favorite baseball memories came while watching some relatively bad baseball in the late 80s and early 90s. I’ll just hope they win when I watch, and if they don’t win that day, I’ll hope they win the next one. The last thing any Yankee fan should do is whine and feel sorry for themselves. We’ve gotten to see some of the best players and best moments any fan could hope for, for the last 12 years.

When those guys say this, I think it's a eulogy for the last 12 years of Yankee baseball. This team is going to be blown up and rebuilt. Who knows if Torre will be around or if Cashman will be around. It's not like they have ready replacements if they get sacked now; and sacking them really would be an admission the season is over in May.

It's going to be hard to rebuild. May as well start guessing early...
A-Rod will walk, and chances are they'll let him. 3B will be a hole.
Bobby Abreu will be alllowed to walk. RF will be another hole.
Johnny Damon will be a hole if kept so Damon may even get traded, though it's hard to see any takers.
Giambi will be around by dint of his albatross contract. 1B is still a hole.
Matsui would be better trade fodder than either so he may get traded for something.
Posada is old, so he's technically part of the problem in spite of his performance- Not that there are any ready replacements. So Catcher is another hole, but something tells me he'll be re-signed.
Anyway, it's months before the deck chairs get re-shuffled, but it already looks like a mess that needs to be cleaned up.

Google Knows Best

Things In The Inbox
This came in from a friend:


Yup, Google IS great.

Something Sexy, Something Not

Something Not First

Former fastbowler Craig McDermott was blackmailed with a sex tape by his yacht detailing dude.

Boat detailer Peter Josef Vigan, 36, of Oxenford, appeared in Southport Magistrates Court today charged with one count of demanding money with the threat of a detriment.

Mr Vigan, who is on bail, has yet to enter a plea. He will appear in Southport District Court at a date to be fixed. Police alleged that Mr McDermott, a former fast bowler turned millionaire Gold Coast property developer, was forced to hand over more than $50,000 to stop home movies of him having sex with his wife Ann-Maree being released on the internet.

The threats were allegedly made between December 2005 and December 2006.
Police said a video camera and several home movies were stolen from Mr McDermott's luxury cruiser in late 2003 while it was being detailed at a Gold Coast marina.

What I want to know is who actually wants to see the above two having sex?

Something Sexy
It's old news but somebody worked on this sculpture of a dead Paris Hilton on the autopsy table:


Yep, sure does it for me. The thought of a dead Paris Hilton - and I'm not remotely a necrophiliac.

The View From The Couch

Protecting the Backsides of Politicians

Ever the champion of the common dufus (like me), IKEA has hit the headlines.

Furniture giant IKEA has published newspaper advertisements urging Prime
Minister John Howard to fit out his Canberra cabinet office with bright red
swivel chairs.

The advertisement, printed today in Fairfax newspapers, comes after it was revealed in Senate estimates the Federal Government had bought a new set of executive chairs at a cost to taxpayers of $200,000 - or just under $3000 per chair.

IKEA took Liberal backbencher Don Randall to task after he tried to defend the Prime Minister, claiming that Mr Howard should not have to buy the chain's "dodgy" chairs instead of spending $200,000 on plush seating.

The Swedish furniture retailer today ramped up its response in the form of quarter-page broadsheet ads headed: "We respectfully ask Prime Minister John Howard to sit on it."

IKEA pointed out Mr Howard could have refitted the cabinet office at far less cost to taxpayers by purchasing a set of "Jerrik" swivel chairs for $569 each.

The text of the ad reads: "Prime Minister John Howard wants to spend almost $3000 on a single chair while this one here offers quality, design and comfort for only $569.

"In fact, our range of chairs starts from as low as $12.95. Surely that would make us the preferred choice."

Mr Howard also was forced to cancel a planned $540,000 taxpayer-funded upgrade of his private dining room in Parliament House after the figure was revealed during estimates hearings.

I guess sitting in an IKEA "Jerrik" chair would rob the Prime Minister of some dignity, IKEA being Swedish and all. Oh to have a pretty Swede to look after my rearside. :)

The Things Spoken By Paul Keating


It's been a while since good ol' Paul piped up, and today he has a doozy. He says we should quit screwing around with Canberra and just make Sydney the National Capital.

FORMER prime minister Paul Keating has claimed that Sydney should replace Canberra as the capital of Australia. During his speech on the future of Sydney Harbour last night, Mr Keating said Prime Minister John Howard had effectively moved his government to Sydney, and that Canberra had an air of unreality.

"Transport, communications, housing - all these real things are camouflaged in Canberra," he said. "And the Government operates now out of a little office building in Phillip Street, Sydney. "That's where Cabinet meets, except when Parliament's sitting.

"So what we've got is when Parliament's sitting, everyone flies off to the bush capital and they all live in their motel rooms, and then they all fly out again on Friday
morning."

That sound you hear is the sound of axes sharpening, teeth gnashing, and knives being drawn in Melbourne.

Religion, Morals, Ethics and Thought
It's one of those days where the masses are disturbed by radical thought. Richard Dawkins, he of the Socio-Biology school of thought, is also necessarily a logical positivist kind of scientist in that Oxford mold - and so is a radical atheist.

He has been making lovely noises with his documentary 'The Root of All Evil' by taking on all the Levantine religons. The hardest to fight back so far is Christianity.

The thing that springs to my mind is that it's probably very difficult for religious people to come at the notions Dawkins is presenting as scientific fact. Facts are hard to dispute, especially when you don't share a common ground on epistemology. I understand Dawkins and his atheism; heck, I'm probably an Atheist; but only by default. The problem I do have with the current prevalence of Levantine religious thought is that if these lines of thinking are so wonderful, why are they contributing to so much pain and suffering on this planet? Clearly, they aren't working too well.

And so I bring to you today's link.

THEY may be worlds apart, physically and philosophically, but Australian-born
Margaret Somerville, one of the world's leading writers and thinkers about ethics, arrives in Sydney today determined to do battle with arch-atheist Richard Dawkins.

"He is a dangerous man who is causing me disturbed, sleepless nights," Professor Somerville said of the creator of the controversial shockumentary series The Root of All Evil?, showing on ABC Television and which concludes this Sunday.

"By attacking religion Dawkins thinks he is going to eliminate the world's evils, but he is so negative, so destructive in his approach, that he is escalating the conflict between warring cultures at a time when we should be seeking common ground," she said.

Uuh, I dunno about that.
People such as those Islamists/Fund-a-'mental'-ists push for Shariat law, the Zionist Israelis prosecuting their war in palestine, (and theior opposite number with their suicide bombers) and Christian fund-a-'mental'-ism propping up G.W. Bush's Republican Party are all significantly contributing to the conflicts around the planet. The Levantine religions are allowing themselves to be the banners around which power-hungry, violent people are trying to rally people around. Worse still, these banners then become ciphers which close off discussion and argument. And they all share the hallmark that reason should be shunned in favor of faith and irrationality.

Seriously, if they all stopped believing their respective claptrap, they might just find a better way to solve their conflicts. Think about that for a minute. How many conflicts around the planet this minute would drop dead if religion and its self-righteous exclusivist thinking stepped back? Israel-Palestine? Afghanistan? Iraq? East Africa? Pakistan? Kashmir? Compared to this, the Chinese paranoia about Falun Dafa is laughable.

As Philip K. Dick noted in his great book 'VALIS', the true name of religon is Death. He says, that the point of religion is to find a divinity and kill it. They crucified Jesus, but they also got Mani even worse. Luther's objections to the indulgences sold by the Catholic Church led to the Thirty Years' War in Europe. The Islam surge across North Africa was not bloodless as Muslim scholars make it out. The Crusades, we know about. Let's not forget the Balkans in the 1990s. Frankly, the world would be better if so many people stopped obsessiong over death. If people really want to understand death better, they ought to read philosophy. Try Heidegger for a start. It's a heck of a lot more useful than "ashes to ashes, dust to dust".

As for Margaret Somerville, if your morals can only be propped up by having religion, it's a sign that line of thinking can't reach the status of being ethical thought. Ethics necessarily begins when we abandon the crutch of religious thinking and start analysing values for ourselves. "Because God/Allah/YHWH says so," should be the first line we abandon. - It's scary, risky and frought with dangers, but it's a risk more people should be willing to take. Yes, it opens the door to the likes of Marquis deSade and Gilles de Rais and Adolf Hitler. It also opens the door to Karl marx, Siegmund Freud, and Carl Jung. It opens the door to scientific enlightenment and therefore a true liberation. Simply put, it is more rewarding to abandon the cause of God and take up the causeof reason.

I can't believe I just wrote that sentence. I sound like Diderot. Heck, the cause of reason hs been around for 300 years. It's an indictment of humanity that more have not embraced it. If we had to preserve religons to preserve morality, then I don't think there is much hope for humanity.

Sticking to the old stuff is only going to let us repeat the horrors of the last two millennia. 2000 years of killing and maiming in the name of one God.
It's time humanity grew up and gave up on bad habits.

Was Watching... Jesus!

While I'm on this topic, my favorite movie about Jesus is Martin Scorsese's 'The Last Temptation of Christ'. I've wanted the DVD for a while but the thing has always been $30+. Then, I picked up a copy for $5 at a stall in Birkenhead Point last week. Pretty happy about that!

It's still an excellent movie. Willem Defoe as Jesus is pretty compelling viewing. More so, the passionate portrayal of Judas by Harvey Keitel. There's a scene in which Jesus tells Judas that he has to betray Jesus in order for things to work out to God's plan. There you go, what kind of God has to sacrifice his own kid to save humanity? But that's another debate. :) It's a fantastic, heart-wrenching scene.

While I'm no kind of Christian, having lived in the West for so long, I'm pretty used to the tropes of Judeo-Christian thought. However, my girlfriend who is Japanese to the core, watched the whole thing agog. She said she couldn't believe the silliness of what Christians take on faith as miracles. She said it's like being asked to believe a bunch of fairy-tales and if you don't? - (Insert 'Dragnet' Theme) - "You go to hell!"

Anyway, I recall the brouhaha about this movie because of the sequence towards the end where Jesus gets tempted by Satan into coming off the cross (hence the title of the movie) and lives an oridnary life. He even has sex, and we the audience gets to see it. Watching it now, it's so tame a concept, but I can imagine the fury towards this film is still out there.
But if you ever want to watch a good movie about Jesus, this is it.

This Moose Maybe Cooked


I hate to say this but Moose might be done. His year to date looks like this.

IP: 29.0
Hits: 36
Runs: 21
Earned Runs: 21
HR: 5
BB: 6
K: 12
ERA: 6.52
WHIP: 1.45
BAA: .313

In a 3 game set against the Bosox where the Yankees actually played like, y'know, The YANKEES, Moose alone was the big disappointment. That second game loss where he gave up that homer to the struggling Manny Ramirez - he of the .384 SLG coming into the game - killed me.

In fact Moose's 2 wins for the season were against the struggling Texas Rangers, and he really hasn't been effectual otherwise. In fact he's essentially duplicated the Igawa effort but twice as often, with half the strikeouts.
12k in 29 innings is really crappy, and un-Moose-like.
WHIP of 1.45 says his stuff has been pretty mediocre.
The BAA of .313 says he's been unlcky by just under 4%, which is nowhere enough to shave off from the 6.52 ERA.
The biggest culprit is the 5 HRs he's given up in 29 innings.

It's a shame because I really like Moose, but if he's going to pitch like this, it's going to be better to get somebody else in there. My guess is that the rotation after June will be: Wang, Pettitte, Rocket, Hughes, Clippard/DeSalvo. I think it's also time to give up on Kyle Farnsworth. he's just not helping with his 5.00+ ERA in the pen. I'm sure Chris Britton could do better.

Meanwhile, the Rocket ran into some static at AA Thunder on his comeback trail.

Clemens walked four, struck out five, hit a batter and threw a wild pitch. He
gave up four extra base hits, including three doubles and a triple.
"It was one step in the right direction, a little further down the road," Clemens said.
"I'm glad to get one more done."
The fans were funny though. After Clemens threw two balls to start the game, one yelled:"Come on throw a strike!"

3 runs 6 hits in 5-1/3 innings doesn't sound too dominant to me. I don't know, but it does seem to me it's high time the Yanks stopped whistling by the graveyard at night.

Unravelling, Not Unfolding

I Won't Panic But... It's Getting Late Early

How unlucky can you get? In the same season that the Yankees lost Jeff Karstens to a hit ball off his leg, they lose Darrell Rasner to a hit ball off his pitching index finger. Let's count the rookie starts for this year...

Chase Wright: 2 starts, 1 good, 1 awful.
Jeff Karstens: 1 start where he broke leg in the first inning.
Kei Igawa: 4 plus one emergency 1st inning entrance as long reliever for the Karstens start
Darrell Rasner: 6 Games 4.01 ERA 1-3.
Philip Hughes: 2 starts, 1 good, 1 bad before his hamstring injury.
Matt DeSalvo: 2 Starts - 1 excellent, 1 so-so.
Tyler Clippard: 1 good start.
That's 18 games out of 42 games played so far, started by *rookies*. The amazing part is that the combined record there is just under .500, given that the Yankees are at 19-23.

Amazingly, if you consider Carl Pavano who made 2 starts as a ring-in sort of pitcher, then it's 20 games out of 42 that have been started by the non-Mussina-Wang-Pettitte pitchers. I don't know if I should be amazed or appalled by that run of injuries that has wrought this situation. Heck, if this had been any other team, they would have had to go 12 deep into their starting pitching depth, and who knows what kind of pitcher sits there. Because that's exactly where Tyler Clippard came in. If you count Humberto Sanchez on the 60day DL Clippard is actually the '13th Warrior' on the mound.

I'm actually of the school that Cashman and co. have done a good job stocking up on arms over the last few years, which has enabled them to go 12-13 deep in Starters. Which other organization could have lost 4/5ths of their rotaion at one point or another and gone to no.13 in their starting pitching depth, and still stayed near .500? This is no mean feat by the Yankee Organisation - not that it has contributed greatly to a big win total right now. Nonetheless, given the rash of injuries 19-23 may actually be a much better record than a team with such bad luck could normally hope for.

It should also be noted that the bullpen has at times featured Brian Bruney and Chris Britton, who are in the sophomore campaign and Sean Henn who is in his rookie campaign, as well as having lost Scott Proctor for 4 days due to suspensions. Call me a masochist but I'm actualy interested to see what this team can do once it has a Wang-Pettitte-Moose-Rocket-Hughes rotation going. It might just make the Post-Season.

While it may seem weird to say this, I do see the silver-lining; judging from the pitching roster names, this is actually a transitional Yankee team. You can almost start to see the future beyond Pettitte, Moose and Rocket. A future rotation that is going to be headed by Hughes, with Rasner, Karstens, DeSalvo, Clippard, plus Ian Kenndey, Joba Chamberlain, and Dellin Betances on the way. It may turn out to be a brand new dynasty.

The Governator

The Number Of The 'Beasts' - 666


Arnie says he is ready to Terminate again, and by that we don't mean he's going to star in T4.

Governor Arnie is trying to resume some executions in California, - apparently there's a backlog of deathrow inmates that has hit 666 - so it's time to resume the executions. There's been a moratorium on executions in California since last year when a judge ruled the lethal injection system in california was umm, inhumane. Well, maybe executions in of themselves are inhumane, but there was no mention of that.


Anyway, here's the lowdown:

"I am committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure that the lethal injection
process is constitutional so the will of the people is upheld," Governor
Schwarzenegger said yesterday.

The moratorium on capital punishment started in February last year, when Judge Jeremy Fogel halted the execution of Michael Morales, a condemned rapist and murderer. Judge Fogel ruled in December that California's lethal injection procedures were "cruel and unusual punishment".

Yesterday the state said it would build a new "Lethal Injection Facility" at San Quentin. Officials said changes to the lethal injection protocol would result in the "dignified end of life" for the condemned inmate. California said that it would stick to a three-drug combination for executions. The first, sodium thiopental, renders prisoners unconscious and keeps them in that state before the injection of ancuronium bromide, which induces paralysis, then potassium chloride, which sparks cardiac arrest. The training would include lessons on mixing sodium thiopental, a powder that must be mixed with a liquid for use in the process.

Executioners would have to monitor inmates more closely to ensure they were unconscious before the two lethal chemicals would start to flow. Both he warden and the person dispensing the drugs would stay in the new, expanded execution chamber to monitor the condemned prisoner for signs of discomfort and distress before death.

Governor Schwarzenegger said he was confident the changes would enable xecutions to resume. "I am confident that the plan submitted to Judge Fogel will address his concerns and allow the state to enforce the law of the land," he said.

Yep. I can remember the moment I became a true fan of Arnie. It was during the the production of 'Commando' whereupon he did an interview for Entertainment Tonight. He claimed he was generally cast in 2 types of roles:
1) He plays a completely brutal killing machine, like the Terminator.
2) He plays a loving father who halfway through the movie turns into a brutal killing machine like the Terminator.
He said it with a knowing smirk, so clearly he understood the irony of what he was saying and enjoyed it. That's a man who has considerable self-knowledge - certainly enough to make Plato or any Greek philosopher proud. It's nice to know he's still willing to go by type 2 of his typecasting. Can't say I have an opinion on capital punishment, but I'm satisfied that the Governor of California is acting in his best faith. :)

TileFile

A Bit OF Fun
I have been playing around with this site a bit. I think it's quite innovative and different to the chaos of MySpace or the narrow focuses of specialist sites. It's still new, but it looks like it could be real fun.

Testing TileFile Redux

Rakuda 1.2
And here is the 'grid' containing the 5 video sequences that make up my film, 'Rakuda 1.2':

The theory being, you can click on each video tile and play them one by one.

Fantasy League Update

The 'DL' Blues And Other Thoughts
My team is beset by the injury bug about as badly as the Yankee starting rotation and yet the only Yankee starter I have is Phil Hughes. King Felix delivered his magnificent Complete Game against The Bosox and promptly blew up in his next start. Phil Hughes we all know about. Just as King Felix has come off the DL, now it is Huston Street who has landed on DL. Ouch. But get this:
I have a shortage of Holds - just as I did last year.
As a remedy, I had hoped - and thus kept! - Akinori Otsuka as my 'Holds' man, but of course Eric Gagne goes on the DL, so Otsuka ends up picking up 'Saves' instead of 'Holds' for 4 weeks. Just as Gagne comes back I find that Street is going on the DL, so maybe I do need Otsuka's 'Saves'. Anyway, during the 4 weeks of Gagne's absence, I pick up Jason Frasor to get my 'Holds'. The next thing you know, BJ Ryan ends up on the DL and Frasor is the closer, and promptly combusts. *Ugh*. So I go looking for Fernando Rodney, who is suddenly filling in for Joel Zumaya who is injured and out for 12 weeks, only to see him combust in the set-up role. And then I pick up Joe Rauch and of course the moment I get him, he inherits the closer's role because Chad Cordero is out with an injury. Thankfully, Cordero is coming back soon, but my Bullpen has been a mess for 6 solid weeks.
Oh yeah, that and Mo's 3 big blown 'Saves' and 8.00+ ERA. *Sheesh*.

In the mean time my Combat Wombats have slowly crept back up to No. 2 on the back of decent hitting but it is way behind the front runner. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Orlando Hudson, and his position as the 3-hole hitter in Arizona and believing he was up to the task as like imbibing some Jonestown-Kool-aid. Well, the Kool-aid is still working. The guy is actually turning in a career year. I'm pretty sure the Blue Jays would be kicking themselves right now if it weren't for the fact that they have Aaron Hill, another player worthy of Kool-aid status.

David Wright had an awful April but is finally starting to hit. I sort of wonder if he will ever be the 30HR guy. In some ways I expect Alex Gordon to be that but he has hit way below the Mendoza line so it's not even worth contemplating picking him up. I'm really short on Total Bases so in the mean time I've plugged my holes with the likes of Mark Lowell, Sammy Sosa and Mark Teahen. It's tenuous.

Trading in the Jack Kerouac Memorial League is almost impossible. I can't find anybody who wants to trade anything. Not even equivalent ranked players in a straight up swap. I guess the good news is everybody loves their squad no matter where they are sitting on the table. I do find it frustrating. I'm not sure those extra roster spots have encouraged trades at all; if anything they've been a dis-incentive.

AFL League
After 4 rounds of head to head, my team finally got a win. I don't really want to tinker with that roster because the 'trade' limits are strict, so it is a bit like watching a train crash. 1-3 is an awful record to have at the quarter-way mark.

Barry Hall has been disappointing. O'Keefe has been better. Dale Thomas has been a handy player, as has Shannon Hurn who is effectively filling in for the hole in the West Coast roster left by Ben Cousins - who says drug abuse is bad? It's helping my Fantasy Team. :)

Dark Matter

Strongest Evidence Yet


Long disputed, the evidence for Dark Matter has been gatherin steadily.

"This is the strongest evidence yet for the existence of dark matter," astronomer Myungkook James Jee of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore told reporters.

Astronomers believe dark matter - as opposed to ordinary matter making up the stars, planets and the like - comprises about 85 per cent of the universe's material, but evidence of it has been difficult to come by.

Dark matter cannot be directly seen. It does not shine or reflect light, but astronomers infer its existence in galaxy clusters by observing how its gravity
bends the light given off by even more faraway galaxies. They do not know what
it is made of, but think it could be a kind of particle.

Astronomer Richard Massey of the California Institute of Technology, not involved in the research, said the findings are facing scepticism within the astronomical community.

"It's really exciting if it's right. But to be sort of convinced of the ring, astronomers would really want to see some independent observations verifying it," Massey said.

Here's the article.

From The CD Shelf

Sparkle In The Rain

Sometimes you pick a CD off the shelf and you go, "Hot Damn, I had that!" and stick it into the player to hear a burst of nostalgia. There are some heavily nostalgia-invested albums and sentimental favorites but there are few that I manage to completely forget about in between listens. And so I bring to you, Simple Minds' pinnacle effort (in my books), 'Sparkle In The Rain'

The year was 1984. Simple Minds were the band, and they were just so odd.
The hallmark of a Simple Minds album up until then was for songs to have weird shapes, synths galroe, subdued guitars, machine-like drums. Albums like 'Empires and Dances' and 'Sister Feelings' Call' were filled with music that definitely did not come from a Pop Tunesmith's pen. In retrospect, you could tell there wasn't a Finn Brother or McCartney among them to write proper songs - These 'songs' were jagged and ragged, dripping with an alienatingly New Wave sound.

Was I a fan? I don't know. People around me liked them a lot, so I think I just bought these albums to find out what the fuss was all about. Unsuprisingly I have most of their early releases on LP, which is more a testameent to my collective instincts than my love of early Simple Minds. Yet the fact that I have 'Life in A Day' and 'Real to Real Cacophony' suggests I might have been a pretty hardcore fan without knowing it. The least you could say about them to that point, was that they sounded interesting.

Also in retrospect it seems so obvious it is mis-shapen, but at the time 'New Gold Dream' seemed like a new direction in experimental Pop - well, Michael Jackson made sure Pop wan't going to be with 'Thriller'. So much for Pop Experimentalism. In turn, the album after 'Sparkle in the Rain' is 'Once Upon A Time' which goes hard for the pop hits. Indeed thee Simple Minds song book is totally different before and after 'Sparkle in th Rain'.

When you put on 'Sparkle In The Rain', it kicks off with a stunning sonic shock. I'm a fan of albums that really kick when they kick off. It's a pretty uncompromising rock album, by comparison to their previous Pop gestures and stylings. The entire album is drenched in 12bit digital reverb of the time; Which it must be said, back in the mid-'80s sounded so unworldly and cool. The drums are hard, the rhythms are generally fast, and the mix is mostly clear. The sonic unity of the album is so accomplished that when the first side climaxed with 'Waterfront', you realised you had been grooving relentlessly for a side of an LP. How many records were like that back in 1984? The only other albums I could think of are '90125' and '1984'.

What is most striking about the album today is that even in the history of Simple Minds, this album has a unique sound and feel that captures the mood of the times. As they say in 'Almost Famous', it's a snapshot of a band in transition. Somebody once quipped that if you could remember the '60s, you weren't really there. I say, if you could remember the '80s, you are a masochist. Even so, if I had to pick out a musical highlight from the decade, this album might make the Top-10 list. It's one of those albums where you can pull off the shelf and say: "Do you want to know what the 1980s sounded like? Here it is!"

Hmmm... Hold that thought. Let's see now. Here's my 'Top-10 Albums of the 1980s List that does not feature Thriller':

1) 90125 - Yes
2) 1984 - Van Halen
3) Sparkle In The Rain - Simple Minds
4) Peter Gabriel IV - Peter Gabriel
5) Couldn't Stand The Weather - Stevie Ray Vauughan & Doule Trouble
6) Beat - King Crimson
7) Love Over Gold - Dire Straits
8) Aliens Ate My Buick - Thomas Dolby
9) The Joshua Tree - U2
10) A Secret Wish - Propaganda

Honorable mention: Slave to the Rhythm - Grace Jones; White City - Pete Townshend; Synchronicty - The Police; Abacab - Genesis.

That was harder than I thought! That was a drought of a decade.
After 'Sparkle In The Rain', the band went on to produce the hit song 'Don't You (Forget About Me)' for the movie ' The Breakfast Club' which we all sadly know about. It was about that time that I kind of tuned out from their audience group. Unsurprisingly, I don't have any of their albums after 'Once Upon A Time'. I have no idea what they've done since. Reading the Wikipedia entry, it seems they have done a tonne of stuff, most of it inconsequential. It's hard to keep redefining Pop music. Not even Michael Jackson could do it after Thriller; what chance have you got if your best efforts are 'New Gold Dream' and 'Sparkle'?

Still, if you don't have it, then I suggesst you check it out.
If you had it on LP but don't on CD, I suggest you pick one up somewhere along the way.
If you've got it and haven't listend to it for a while, I suggest you stick it on to get a sonic burst of the 1980s. Just for old time's sake.

The Unfolding Yankee Season

Caveat

That's Matt DeSalvo pitching in his debut for the Yankees.

A while back I got an e-mail from somebody who said he really hates this blog because I sometimes write about baseball. The truth is, I don't write about baseball, I write about what I think about in response to the box scores. Anyway, if I lost a reader because I occasionally choose to talk about the things that interest me, so be it. Lord knows there are plenty of blogs out there that don't discuss baseball; and my last entry on anything sporting was about Brian Lara retiring, so go figure.
In the mean time, this entry is going to be all about the Yankee season so far.

Yankee Thought No. 1 - 2005 Redux (Or Is It Reflux?)

Well, here we are again with a re-run of 2005. The Yankees have stumbled out the gate as there have been a rash of injuries that has devastated the rotation. Well, some are even citing the stat that the Yankees have started 4 rookies this year for the first time since a Philadelphia team that no longer exists did so in 1890. What's not surprising is that three of those rookies are from the Yankee's own farm system and the other, Kei Igawa, is only a rookie by semantics - he was the Ace of the Hanshin Tigers for 4 years and so is hardly a babe in the woods. Of the 4, Matt DeSalvo and Darrell Rasner have done well; Philip 'The Franchise' Hughes looked sensational in his second outing as he took a no-hitter into the Seventh and promptly got injured; and Chase Wright had one good outing before the red Sox squashed him like a bug. It's not a bad outcome given who was out: Wang, Moose and Pavano.

More on Pavano in a moment... In 2005, of course they slotted in the likes of Tim Redding, Shawn Chacon and Aaron Small but since then Brian Cashman has stocked the farm system so that he hasn't had to reach for the waiver wires and reject bins. As a wise man once said you only get Shawn Chacon once in your life and well, Cashman had Chacon AND Aaron Small that year, so while the injuries have been annoying to the max, he's done a great job of allowing these young fellows to be in a position to be available to the club.
As crises go, having 4 rookies start, isn't that bad.

Yankee Thought No.2 - TINSTAAPP!

Roger Clemens is coming back. Hooray. TINSTAAPP as you may know, stands for 'There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect"
When you sign a 44 y.o. former Cy Young winner, you could fairly be accused of holding to that philosphy. I hesitate to think what a 45 y.o. Rocket can deliver when a 41-43 y.o. Big Unit was a big disappointment on the standing on the shoulder of even larger disappointments; but what the hey. He only has to beat what Kei Igawa is going to deliver because the front 4 are already Wang, Pettite, Moose and Phil Franchise. Some have estimated this to be about 3 wins. However, that's 3 wins extra the Red Sox won't be getting, so Roger NOT going to the Bosox might be the bigger story than him actually turning up for the Yanks. Either way, it doesn't show the Yankees are suddenly all frugal and penny-pinching. They just know when to open their purses.
One thing I don't get. Will he come back next year if they win the World Series?

Yankee Thought No. 3 - Pavanova
I actually bought the Brian Cashman line and picked up Carl Pavano for 1 start in my Fantasy League. Then, I quickly ditched him for Boof Bonser, who I ditched for Zack Greinke who I ditched for Oliver Perez, who I ditched for Igawa and now Gil Meche. As a result I didn't pick up that one win. I know how Cashman feels. If only the fucker could stay healthy long enough for league average, he would've been great trade bait by now. As it is, he's insisting he needs Tommy John surgery. Aiyah. I don't even care if he's faking it or if he genuinely is the injury-fairy. As Yankee fans like to say,"He's dead to me!"

Yankee Thought No.4 - On The BoSux
As of this writing, the Yankees are 6 games behind the Bosox and 1 game under .500. It's May. I just don't think the Red Sox can really run away with the division. I can always be proven wrong, but they're not as good as they've been playing; and the Yanks certainly not as bad as their record shows. The 2-6 record on 1-run games is a bit of a culprit as Mo has blown 3 saves, but really, it's not going to stay this way. When you see the A's sitting on top of the AL West with a 16-15 record, the fact that there are two 20-win teams in the AL Central just doesn't scare me. I think the Yankees will just inch back and take the division like they have in the previous years.

Yankee Thought No.5 - Phil Franchise

In all of this chaos, Phil Hughes arrived and promptly got injured. This is perhaps the most awful news in all of ths confluence. (Fortunately I picked himup just for the good start, but now he's going to live on the DL for 4-6 weeks and it's killing me). I think it's the first time in living memory that the Yankees have brought up a No.1 Prospect that was a pitcher - TINSTAAPP or not. I'm really rooting for the kid who has been dubbed 'Phil Franchise'.

Yankee Thought No.6 - A-God
I'm delighted at A-Rod's sizzling start. I'm glad the fans have finally embraced him. About time too. At one point he was slugging over 1.000, but since then he's cooled back down to slugging .740. Talk about on fire - he was like the sun itself. He may yet exercise his option and opt out of his contract at the end of the year, but until he does, he's a god. I'm enjoying what the Yankees are getting from him right now. It's great entertainment, and let's be blunt: on some levels, it's all about the entertainment.

Yankee Thought No. 7
It's turning out so far that the returns on the Randy and Sheff trades have not been great. Humberto Sanchez went and got himself Tommy John surgery, which is bad. Russ Ohlendorf hasn't exactly lit up AAA Scranton WB. At the moment the trades are looking a bit Mike-Lowell-for-Ed-Yarnall+2.

Space As A Lifestyle Choice...

Don't Wanna Go Home


Here's an interesting article on what Cosmonauts say about working in Space.

The best, the most beautiful part, is after the start when you look at Earth
straight away," Cosmonaut Vladimir Dezhurov said.
"Earth is like a big, blue balloon and this beautiful balloon is flying, all around it is solid blackness."

Dezhurov has lived in Star City – a formerly top-secret training base for cosmonauts near Moscow – for 21 years and has done two four-month stints aboard the International Space Station, 350 km above Earth. He can think of no other profession he'd like better, despite the fact that after the launch, and that glimpse of his home planet, "it's all work, work, work up there, night and day".

But his main gripe is not the long hours, or missing his family and friends. "The hardest thing is coming back to Earth," he said. The problem is not so much the mundanity of earthly existence – bills to pay, food to buy, chores to complete.

"The muscle fabric degrades very much. It's hard to walk. You have to learn how to walk again, like a small child."

Astronauts train daily aboard the orbiting space station to prevent the atrophy of their legs and feet which are under-used in weightlessness. It takes several weeks under medical supervision to recover from a long stay in space.

The things we learn, every day. :)

Gotta Laugh

Say Hello To Farfour Mouse!


This is pretty wrong-looking and wretched:

A giant black-and-white rodent - named "Farfour," or "butterfly" - but unmistakably a Mickey ripoff - does his high-pitched preaching against the US and Israel on a children's show run each Friday on Al-Aqsa TV, a station run by Hamas.

The militant group, sworn to Israel's destruction, shares power in the Palestinian government.

"You and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists," Farfour squeaked on a recent episode of the show, which is titled, Tomorrow's Pioneers.

"We will return the Islamic community to its former greatness, and liberate Jerusalem, God willing, liberate Iraq, God willing, and liberate all the countries of the Muslims invaded by the murderers."

Children call in to the show, many singing Hamas anthems about fighting Israel.

Israel has long complained that the Palestinian airwaves are filled with incitement.

It's a far cry from Borat, but worth noting.

Quick Shots

My Song Of The Week - 'QVB'

I recorded this old song from my youth. It's hard to explain the circumstances today, but it's essentially about wavering affections.
Check it out.

Fantasy League Blues - AFL Style
My AFL Team has shot to the bottom quarter in a 16 team league in a mere 3 rounds. considering I was at the top of th table at the completion of Round 3, one might ask, "what happened?" 3 straight unlucky losses would do it, boys and gals. From here on in, it's a mystery what will transpire in this league. Oh well.

Fantasy League Blues - MLB Style
My phenom-laden Combat Wombats are running in the middle pack. I don't really know where I can improve my team, other than wait for the retun of Felix Hernandes and Philip Hughes.
I've given up on Alex Gordon this year. He might be the next George Brett, but it ain't happening this year by the look of things. David Wright has played like the definition of crap. Other than that, Jeter's been a rock, Brian McCann has been okaay and Adam Dunn has been awesome.

More on Schirra

Pretty Cool
If you thought the Right Stuff was a bit too macho, you should check this out here from Time Magazine:

Wally Schirra once told Chris Kraft to go to hell. Remember the astronaut, who died this week at 84, for a lot of things, but put that particular bit of courage near the top of your list. Nobody, up until that moment, had ever told Kraft to go to hell, and the fact is, Schirra didn't tell him directly either. What he did do was tell Deke Slayton, the head of the astronaut corps, and he knew Slayton would tell Kraft, the director of all of the manned missions. Even when you're calling down your imprecation from the safe remove of the Apollo 7 command module high in Earth orbit, that took brass.

Apollo 7 was Schirra's third and last mission. Having joined the space agency as one of the original seven astronauts in 1959, the former Korean war combat pilot became the fifth American in space, orbiting the Earth in his tiny Mercury spacecraft in 1962. In 1965, he returned to space aboard Gemini 6 with co-pilot Tom Stafford, rendezvousing with Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, already waiting in orbit in Gemini 7. After those two trips, there wasn't much that rattled Schirra, but agreeing to fly Apollo 7 at all still took some spine.

On January 27, 1967, just 21 months before Schirra's mission took off, the Apollo command module had killed three of his colleagues, when a spark ignited its pure oxygen atmosphere, immolating Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee during a lockdown rehearsal on the pad. Everyone at NASA already knew that the so-far unflown Apollo was a lemon. Not long before the three men died, they sat for a photo session with a model of the command module resting on a table in front of them it. In one of the outtakes never released to the press, they dropped the grins, bowed their heads and brought their hands together prayerfully. They inscribed the picture to Harrison Storms, the head of North American Aviation, the spacecraft's lead contractor: "Stormy," the inscription read, "this time we are not calling Houston!"

After the fire, it was left to Schirra, the commander of the three-man back-up crew that included space rookies Walt Cunningham and Donn Eisele, to help oversee the gutting and redesign of the ship. Schirra was a bear about the job, stalking the factory floor, poking his nose into whatever the engineers were doing and making it clear when he did not like what he saw. If he wasn't satisfied with the answers he got, he'd go up to the executive suites and buttonhole Storms himself. "You guys want to fix this ship or not?" he'd challenge. "If so let me see you down on the factory floor with the rest of us."

After all this, it was no surprise that when the spacecraft finally took off for its 11-day trip, Schirra would be just as much of a pit bull about how the ship would be flown. NASA scientists had stuffed the flight plan with experiments and astronomical observations, but Schirra didn't want any part of them. This was an engineering mission, as the test pilots liked to call it, meaning that it was a shakedown flight for the ship itself, not a working trip for the men in lab coats.
Whenever an experiment crowded an engineering exercise, he'd jettison the experiment. When a prime-time broadcast was scheduled for shortly before the crew was to execute a tricky rendezvous, he scrubbed the TV show. "No TV until after the rendezvous," he pronounced. The ground objected but Schirra held firm. "TV will be delayed without any further discussion."

Things got more contentious still when all three men developed head colds, something that can be uncomfortable enough on Earth and is exponentially worse in the unfamiliar pressure of a sealed spacecraft. Reporters noticed the sparring between mission control and the ship and began writing about the "snappishness" of the astronauts. The Russian press weighed in too, pointing out the crew's "increased irritation due to the monotony of the spaceflight and the imperfect design of the systems for controlling the vital functions of the spacemen."
Finally, Kraft broke all protocol and proposed to speak to Schirra directly. Slayton offered to do it himself, figuring that as one astronaut to another he could communicate more candidly. Slayton did just that and later reported back to Kraft.
"I told him that the whole world was following this flight and that he and his crew were not coming across well," Slayton said. "I told him he was trained to do a job and that he'd better get busy doing it."
"And?" Kraft asked.
"And he told me to go to hell."

As Slayton must have known, however, doing his job was precisely what Schirra was engaged in for the entire 11 days aloft. Astronauts were pilots first and showmen second. And while the silver flight suits and the smiling press events and the ticker-tape parades belied that, they were hired for their unique understanding of the machines they flew and their hardheaded ability to coax the most from them. That was Schirra's gift. And if flipping off his boss was necessary to get his work done, well, he was happy to do that too. Kraft, 83, wound up respecting Schirra for that act of defiance. Schirra was happy to get that nod. But the fact was, the pilot in him really didn't need it.

An interestng read and a peep in to the world of '60s-'70s NASA.

The Passing Of Wally Schirra

All Hail The Mercury Seven


Wally Schirra, he of the Mercury Seven with 'the Right Stuff' passed away.

Schirra was one of the seven young men selected in 1959 to lead the Cold War
space race against the Soviet Union. Only John Glenn and Scott Carpenter remain
from the project. He was born in March 1923 into an aviation family, Schirra
was one of the seven Mercury astronauts named by NASA in April 1959. He then
piloted the Sigma 7 Mercury flight in late 1962, which orbited Earth six
times.

That flight lasted 9 hours, 15 minutes and attained a speed of 28,091km/h at an altitude of 280 km. It travelled almost 230,400 km before re-entry.
Schirra was the command pilot on the historic 1965 Gemini 6 flight. The highlight was a successful rendezvous of Gemini 6 with the already orbiting Gemini 7 spacecraft. This was the first rendezvous of two manned manoeuvrable spacecraft and established another space first for the United States.

In 1968 he was the command pilot on Apollo VII. Schirra had logged a total of 295 hours and 15 minutes in space. He was the only astronaut to have flown Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions.

In 1969 Schirra retired from the US Navy and NASA. According to his family, Schirra died of natural causes.

Farewell, and godspeed, Wally.

Back From The Road

Queensland Perfect One Day, Bending Over Backwards To Help The Next
My road trip involved taking Japanese producers and Executives to Production facilities in the Goldcoast and Wellington. The Goldcoast leg of the trip took us to Movieworld Studios and the facilties there.

The executives and producers are looking to shoot a Ninja movie in the Southern Hemisphere during the Northern winter; their star actor is only available during the deepest winter, but the picture has many ocean scenes. So it was off to these lovely facilties to see just what was possible. The picture is already green-lit, with director, studio and distributor also set. With some luck, I'm set to to be one of the prodcuers should the project be shot in the Southern Hemisphere. Yep, a multi-million dollar feature film with Ninja action.

Movieworld Studios is a lot bigger now than it used to be and is equipped with 3 possible water tanks for shooting underwater sequences. The semi-circular outdoor tank and the latest massive water tank are very deep and very inviting prospects. They aaslo have on-site At-Lab for processing, Panavision for camera support and Photon, for Visual Effects. The only problem with a Queensland location shoot is that the landscape is so sub-tropical Australian. That is to say, with its gorgeous golden sand on immensely long beaches with Australian flora a plenty, it's just not going to be a convincing location for a medieval Japanese rural location.

So while it may not happen on this shoot, Queensland left a deep impression on the Japanese delegation as a shooting destination.

Wellington
Things got more interesting in Wellington, because they just have more of everything there. It's hard to explain how that is possible, but it comes down to one man's name: Peter Jackson.

Peter Jackson's films have enabled Wellington to essentially leap to the top of the list in terms of quality facilities available down under. Yes, Movieworld is bigger than Stone Street, but you just can't beat the strength of having both WETA Workshop and WETA Digital just down the road; and when it comes to Park Road Post, there is nothing else like it on Earth. It's an amazing facility - it's a facility made by a film-maker for film-makers and that says it all.

The other thing Wellington has that Queensland doesn't, are these massive pine forests, which happen to look just like pine forests in Japan. Indeed because NZ is volcanic, even the sand on the beach looks similar. Just to locations had the Japanese delegation really excited. Then of course we went to the WETAs.

Remember Narsil?
Yes you do. That was Isildur's sword that was shattered, and was reforged. Well, I held it. Actually, I held the action prop that WETA Workshop created for the LOTR films, but who's quibbling? I have held Narsil in my very hand!

Anyway, I also got to meet Richard Taylor who built all those wonderful things, and gawked at him because I recognised him from all the DVD extras. He is one amazing man. he talked us through how he would appproach shooting the shark sequence, outlining how he would buildd a modern day Bruce. That was a lecture to behold.

WETA Digital
The amazing thing about doing things digitally is that it's so bloodless. The sort of faffing around and endlessly adjusting things that are all too often unrepeatable, with ananlog set ups simply get replaced by repeatable processes. The guys aat WETA Digital talked us through how the crew might work on a Dry-For-Wet shoot and how that might be put together. It's a fascinating solution to a difficult problem. To be honest, I'm a big fan of simpler, repeatable processes, so this was very promising.
Again, the folks at WETA Digital were very impressive.

So What Now?
Hopefully, the Japanese execs decide on what they want to do in the next month. Then I think it will be time to set up the shoot. Should be exciting if they do choose to do it down under.
And if they don't... Something tells me their interest in the Southern Hemisphere is piqued. Stay tuned. :)