fine whine

Based on an offhand recommendation from somebody at work, tonight as I washed the dishes I watched Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. I hadn't heard much about the movie before, and frankly never added it to my list because it sounded mindless, and was written and directed by the 'auteur' behind Dude, where's my car, which I have not yet seen. That movie has been described to me as equally hilarious and stupid, and, well, I just haven't gotten around to checking it out yet.

On the Harold and Kumar DVD is included the trailer for Festival express, the 33 years overdue documentary about the 1970 Canada train that shuttled Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Buddy Guy, The Band, the Flying burrito brothers, and others between three massive concerts and the jam sessions and parties and liquor store raids in between. I mention this because part of the trailer is scored with the Dead's "Casey Jones" (a song obviously inspired by the trip), which I had inexplicably running through my head for a number of hours two days prior. Ooooh, spooky.

While we're on the topic of music, however, I must give credit to Harold and Kumar for finally letting me hear the lyrics of "Let's get retarded" by the Black-eyed peas*. You could well recognize this song, as it is largely the title phrase repeated over some catchy beats over and over again. I'd heard it every week at work during our weekly lobby meetings to announce how well the business was doing, and I'd taken the lyrics to say "Let's get things started" or something similar. Never once had I thought that our company's co-presidents would use a song about getting wasted as a lead-in for a meeting.

Speaking then of bureaucracy (well, I guess I was), I also watched The Terminal, starring Tom Hanks and Stanley Tucci. Stanley's one of those actors whose name is immediately recognizable even if his face or his films are not. At least, he was to me. For many a year I've had Joe Gould's secret on my list of films to watch, and I think it was probably because Ian Holm was in it. Oddly enough I happened to see it at the library today, as I often have, since it doesn't seem to get checked out very much. Every time I see it I consider watching it, but the few times I glance at the covers I put it back, not wanting to see a period piece or a sappy drama. Well it turns out that Stanley stars in it and directs it. Go figure. I'll probably watch it soon, as Stanley does a pretty good job in Terminal. Also on my list is 1996's Big night, his directorial debut, and I'm pretty sure I'd added that because Tony Shaloub is in it.

That's what I like about having such a long list (over four hundred films long), the fact that I often forget why a certain one is on it and get the thrill of figuring it out while watching. Of course not every movie I watch is on my list before I see it; such was the case with The last shot, in which, coincidentally, Tony Shaloub appears.

His scenes aren't the high point of that film, but they aren't its lowest either. It's an adequate Hollywood farce, more or less, but doesn't seem to make much of its potential. The story is about a fake film production to cover a mob crackdown, and it turns into a fable about compromising one's vision and selling out and cashing in and filming a movie called "Arizona" in New England.

Matthew Broderick actually looks like a grownup, for once, but that might just be the beard talking. Alec Baldwin doesn't impress as much as he could as a starry-eyed FBI agent finally seeing his chance to do something big. The rest of the cast fails to make much of an impression as well (except in small bits, such as Toni Collette providing a drug test urine sample while chatting in a restaurant). Prominent for the lack of prominence is Calista Flockhart as a foul-mouthed struggling actress who takes small animals hostage to get her way at least twice. I think that her doing this is the old hackened phenomenon of the tv actor trying to escape typecasting as a popular, wholesome character, but she comes off as more annoying than startling or eye-opening.

On the other side of the cliché is Neil Patrick Harris's appearance in Harold and Kumar, as himself. Not only is he a former wholesome character trying to expand his reperitoire, his character is expected to be as nice as Doogie Howser and this allows him even more of a free hand to mess with the protagonists and the audience. He reappears later in the film and neatly ties up his little plot tangent, and satisfyingly so (for us and for the guys onscreen) and overall it works. Yes, it's a stunt, and one as blatant as Dustin Diamond's uncredited cameo in Made (as himself, the guy who played Screech on Saved by the bell) and just as well incorporated into the plot.

So did I like any of these movies? I'm not sure. Harold and Kumar go to White Castle made me laugh a number of times and brightened up what would otherwise been dull dish-washing. It has funny moments, but they don't gel into something of significance, unlike, oh, Office space, for example. The boys aren't Cheech and Chong reincarnated, and fail to overcome the limitations of the road movie, drug movie, and mismatched buddy films all in one shot.

The Terminal also made me laugh, and at more sophisticated jokes. It too falters, relying on too many neat little touches or strays too far from plausibility, but everybody involved puts so much into it to make it nevertheless watchable and enjoyable. Knowing Andrew Niccol had a hand in writing it helped me understand the inclusion of some of the film's scenes that were too quirky to be believable, but Spielberg and Hanks handle them more masterfully than Al Pacino and Niccol himself did with the clunky, dull and totally unbelievable S1m0ne from a couple years back. Niccol's an interesting writer, but in smaller doses and concepts not quite so high. Still, I think I liked it, and I'll probably watch it again someday, if for nothing else but the rich performances and the impressive set construction that doesn't distract from them at all.

I've probably seen The last shot the only time I'll watch it. My track record with Hollywood farces and insider jokes is spotty at best. Of the ones I can list off the top of my head:The Player, Get Shorty, Swimming with Sharks and The Big Picture, I wasn't particularly enamored with any of them. There are better movies about making movies, but that would be a whole different topic to address. Perhaps another time.

* The Peas are at the forefront of the so-called 'crunk' genre of music, revolving around partying (i.e. smoking marijuana), getting drunk, and having fun. While I am certianly fond of that last one, and occasionally have partaken of the previous item, I haven't ever smoked up or smoked out or partied or whatever the kids call smoking pot these days. While I seem to be able to enjoy drug-reference movies on some level (Half baked was funnier than Harold and Kumar), what little bit of crunk I've heard has no appeal to me at all**.

** Moreover the popular crunk appropriation of the term 'retarded' to mean 'drunk and/or high' is at the same time offensive and disappointing. In addition it brings to mind the reprehensible Saturday night live sketches starring Jimmy Fallon and Rachel Dratch as idiot teenagers with a camcorder and a crush on each other. In every sketch, many times more than once, they play-insult each other with "You're retarded" in a stupid accent before making out. I do not like to be reminded of these sketches.

There's something worse than having an extraordinarily deep pile of work. It's knowing that there's an extraordinarily deep pile of work that's not quite ready to drop on you yet, and there's nothing you can do about it either way*.

* So there.

So much for my company's supposed security. Despite keeping us from our personal email* and desktop wallpaper our network and computers were compromised today. Apparently a hole in the plug-n-play service built into Windows 2000 was published recently, and, despite a fix appearing not long thereafter from Microsoft, our workstations were not prepared for the onslaught. Apparently in the last day or two some fourteen variants of the same exploit have been worming their way around, and it hit my computer at about noon. As far as I can discern all it did was to shut down my computer, but others didn't fare so well (one had all of her emails erased. Lucky her).

I, of course, assumed that the NT ADMINISTRATOR mentioned in the shutdown notice (which admittedly didn't look familiar) was someone in the I.T. end of things, and they were going to come after me for my custom wallpaper and unapproved software. When I began hearing cubicle mumblings about viruses and shutting down I paid attention, and slowly the rumors spread about a virus outbreak.

Of course Zotob and RBot and the others are technically worms, but who am I to argue? Some of my coworkers don't quite comprehend computers the way I do.

You see, I sought out a fix, and found the aforementioned Microsoft hotfix. I put it on a floppy and set out to find as-yet-uninfected computers to vaccinate. I gave the disk to somebody and she put it in the drive, and then asked me, "Now what do I do?". Immediately I realized that my instruction of "Run the one file on this disk" might've been insufficient so I walked her through the three click process.

Of course, less than half an hour later someone official wandered around telling us that we don't in fact need to turn off and unplug our computers (from the "blue cord" only, they'd said) but instead just reboot around 3:45.

Naturally the rumors had begun around 1pm, and there were many, many empty cubes for an hour or two while rumor and reality clashed. In the end we're all back up and running. What is really amusing is that there were whole departments of people unwilling to heed the hearsay and stubbornly kept working. Here they had an opportunity to socialize for an hour, and they turned it down. I don't know who's crazier, them, or the people supposedly securing our computers.

* Even Gmail (via https) is now blocked. Somehow they've even managed to plug that hole, much to my chagrin. I still have some tricks up my sleeve--and my own wallpaper, not theirs--but dammit, I shouldn't need to try and beat them. We should all be on the same side here, and naturally it should be my side. Stupid policies.

"Webinar" Say it out loud a couple times. The word just rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? First brought to my attention over a year ago, it hasn't emerged from any casual conversation or other interaction with anybody until today, and then only indirectly.

Nevertheless I cringed. It's not a real word, and it's not enough of a sound-alike to pass as one. There is no easy way to get, logically or phonically, from "seminar" to "webinar".

Anyway, this matters not, as not only is the word lacking in my approval but also in general meaning, as an email my coworker received today.

He's the new guy but I suppose I won't be able to call him that much longer. His position is senior to mine and it won't be long before he runs out of questions to ask me.

Since he is still new to the organization, he is midway through his so-called 'onboarding' process. Today he received an email ordering him to participate in a webinar.

By 'participate', of course, I mean to say that he was supposed to open a PowerPoint presentation attached to the email and call in on a conference call to follow along.

Not one bit of this so-called webinar was being done with the Web. Not one bit! Of course, "phonecallandpowerpoint-inar" doesn't sound any better, does it?

What comes below 'meaningless'? I mean, after 'buzzword', of course?

I'm angry. I received an email in my work inbox today that really annoys me, mostly because I'm annoyed that it angered me so much.

They're 'restricting' our ability to change the desktop wallpaper. By 'restrict' they mean to say 'remove' since now anytime my coworkers or I minimize all windows we will be greeted with a cool blue background with the company's logo (which is itself just two words in different weights the same font mushed together).

I already know who I work for: a company that wants to suck every drop of individuality out of its workers, apparently.

I'm not sure why this bothers me so much. One theory that I have is that this is due to the other erosion of my 'freedom' lately, in that certain sites are blocked including Flickr and all web-based email (POP3 access too) as well as a host of sites designated as tasteless, games-related, insecure and more. They've told me that I am not to be installing my familiar free applications such as Irfanview and Firefox because they are not officially approved. They've demanded that we purge all emails older than three months, though my inbox quota frequently fills up in under three weeks if not three days.

I want to work and restricting what I do on my computer is restricting my work. But keeping me from changing my background doesn't really change what I can do.

That said, blocking me from the Control Panel does. That is another point on the email sent today, that the Settings portion of the Start Menu will be 'restricted' and by restricted again they mean 'removed' going so far to explain the point as to define icon ("picture") and to show a screenshot of the butchered Start Menu.

Damnit though, why can't I keep my personal backgrounds? Am I not to have any shred of personality or humanity on my desktop? I suppose I could compensate by color-printing my collection of desktops and littering the walls of my cubicle with them, but somehow that seems, well, wasteful and stupid.

Whereas their policy is just stupid.

I'm not in the office today, but if I were I'd likely be fooling around on the internet more than usual. You see, the company has decided to shut off access to web-based and otherwise accessible personal email accounts in the interest of security and whatnot.

This of course irks me, not because I particularly care for my email but more for the fact that I don't like people telling me I cannot do something.

So it's good I'm not at my desk, as I'd probably be working on breaking through the security. Which is probably why another category of blocked sites is 'proxy avoidance information'.

If there is any good to come from this entry, then, it is this: If you email me during the day, even through my contact page, I likely won't get to it until nightfall.

Officially, that is. I'll be working on a workaround straightaway.