Hollywood - Where Originality Goes to Die

The cover story in the Life section of today's USA Today is devoted to Neil Gaiman, who is set to have a big year on the big screen. A film version of his book Stardust comes out later this summer, with a Gaiman-penned version of Beowulf directed by Robert Zemeckis coming later in the year. The article discusses Gaiman's fairly newfound involvement with Hollywood, which has only recently become equipped to bring his fantastic imagery to life. It's not always gone smoothly:

Gaiman had offers to make a film out of his 2005 best seller Anansi Boys, about the sons of an African god discovering their magical background while living in the corrupt modern world, but moviemakers wanted to change the lead black characters to white or drop the magical elements altogether.

That seems quite pointless to me, like making a version of 1984 where Big Brother is a helpful sidekick during Winston's wacky adventures!

Can't Outrun the Long Arm of Justice

A man walks away from a prison camp. He is a Vietnam vet who has "escaped" to sick mother in the Dominican Republic. For 20 years, he lives a life of freedom, bopping back and forth between the US (for VA hospital treatments) and the Dominican Republic. Finally, the US government picks him up and charges him with escape. Does he have a defense? The Eighth Circuit says no. Bob at Decision of the Day has the details.

The Variety of Human Motivation

Today's New York Times has an interesting article about recent research into the things that motivate people to have sex. Researchers at the University of Texas have categorized 237 - that's right, 237 - reasons that people have sex, ranging from the Hollywoodish romantic reasons to purely physical reasons to less enlightened ones ("because of a bet," aka The "Dinah-Moe Humm" Principle). There is, I suppose, a happy ending to the study:

The best news is that both men and women ranked the same reason most often: 'I was attracted to the person.'

The rest of the top 10 for each gender were also almost all the same, including 'I wanted to express my love for the person,' 'was sexually aroused and wanted the release' and 'It’s fun.'

Makes sense to me.

Check Mate, Mr. Bergman

The legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman passed away today, at the age of 89. Bergman is a giant of modern cinema with a voluminous body of work that yours truly has only begun to digest. I jumped right in with both feet with The Seventh Seal, a movie so full of iconic images that it could sustain lesser directors for an entire lifetime.

What I didn't realize until I read this BBC story was exactly how productive the man was:

He may have made more than 50 films, but he was also extremely active in writing and directing radio plays, he did a lot of work for television, he wrote novels, he wrote scripts.

Damn! With productivity like that, maybe he should look up Ludlum's agent.

The Dead Have Risen and They're Writing Spy Thrillers!

Death has never been a barrier to commercial success. The most lucrative celebrity licenses year in and year out belong to the very dead Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein and the presumably dead Elvis. For a while, the best way for a rapper to top the charts was to get murdered - I'm sure that Tupac has sold more CDs in the afterlife than in this one. But most of that involved the reproduction of images created during their lifetimes or the release of archival material recorded before death.

Novelist Robert Ludlum has them all beat, however, as he continues to write best-selling spy thrillers from beyond the grave:

Robert Ludlum died six years ago, but that has done nothing to slow the release of books published under the name of the actor-turned-novelist who specialized in thrillers built on a foundation of paranoia.

Twelve Ludlum books have been released since his death, with a 13th due out in September. The business is deployed now as a kind of film studio, presenting books completed by others or new ones written using his name.

That all seems very weird to me. It's one thing to take a writer's characters or settings and churn out sequels under your own name, as Frank Herbert's son has done with the new Dune books. But to slap the deceased's name on the byline just smacks of opportunistic grave robbing. Of course, in Ludlum's case it seems to be part of scheme to stroke his now-cold ego:

Mr. Ludlum did not want to be forgotten or leave behind only an enormous backlist that started with 'The Scarlatti Inheritance' in 1971. He had little reason to worry: he is now a brand extended far into his afterlife.

'This goes back to 1990 or ’91 when Bob had quadruple bypass,' said Henry Morrison, the agent for Mr. Ludlum. 'One day we were talking about what would happen when he was gone. He said, ‘I don’t want my name to disappear. I’ve spent 30 years writing books and building an audience.’ '

That's either an incredible act of foresight or really really pathetic.

Fun With Pro Se Lawsuits

One summer in law school I worked for the county attorney in Charleston. He's the guy who handled the county government's administrative and procedural issues. Litigation was farmed out to big civil firms. Even though he didn't do litigation work, lawsuits generally were served at the county commission office where I worked, so I occasionally got to thumb through them. That was where I first got a taste of the wild-eyed crazy pro se lawsuit.

Suits brought by regular folk without attorneys aren't necessarily crazy, but crazy folks - and I'm talking certifiably tin-foil-hat-wearing loony - often proceed with their own counsel. Such was the gentleman who was suing just about everybody at every level of government - from the county on up to the president - for some perceived tort that was not particularly well developed in the pages and pages of hand written pleadings.

Along those lines, James Grimmelmann over at PrawfsBlawg points to what might be the mother of all goofy pro se suits. It's 57-page caption (in the federal court database) includes such usual suspects as Duhbya, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. It also includes a few new conspirators:

* www.accuweather.com
* Queen of England
* Gambino Crime Family
* Vienna Convention
* Jewish Workers at NBC/Universal
* Plato
* Various Buddhist Monks
* Medieval Times
* The Da Vinci Code
* POW-MIA
* The Appalachian Trail
* Planet of Pluto
* Cleo, Miss
* Ninja Samurai Fighters
* Engine #9, Fire Department
* Choicepoint
* Psychology Socialism

I'm not sure which I like more - the inclusion of the long dead and decayed Plato or the never quite alive Appalachian Trail! As James says, "[t]ruly a work of art."

Beware the Pussy Cat of Death!

Usually, death is portrayed as a bony looking guy wearing a long black robe. Maybe he carries a sickle. I always thought that was a little to neat and clean. It appears that death actually takes the form of a pussy cat. Beware!

Colbert Takes Down Papa Bear

While I was on sabbatical last week, I watched in amusement as Bill O'Reilly branded DailyKos as everything short of father rapers and mother stabbers. Amused because the thought of Bill "Al-Queda Should Bomb San Francisco" O'Reilly, who allows Michelle "Lock Up the Japs" Malkin to substitute for him, chastize anybody for uncivil discourse sent my hypocrisy meter right off the scale. Amused because O'Reilly's rage was based 0n a handful of comments (some of which he didn't even understand*) from a blog that boasts dozens of diaries and thousands of commenters every day. That's hardly a solid indictment of the owner, powers that be, and vast majority of readers over at DailyKos.

But, no matter - Stephen Colbert is on the case:


Take that, Papa Bear!

Oh, and if O'Reilly's theory that "if it's in the comments on your web site, you said it" is correct, then he has advocated armed rebellion against the United States. Way to go! In that same vein, Glenn Greenwald collects several nasty comments from Malkin's sites as well.

* One of the comments that enraged O'Reilly was someone referring to the Pope as a "Primate." Aside from the fact that the Pope, like all of us (even Billo), is a primate, "primate" is also a term for the head of the Catholic Church in a particular area. The Pope, as Bishop of Rome, certainly fits the bill. Being a Catholic himself, you'd expect O'Reilly might know that.

Consistency Is the Hobgoblin of Small Courts

Bob over at Decision of the Day notes a very interesting en banc decision from the Sixth Circuit today. In brief, John Santine hired three guys to kill a business rival (the lawn care biz in the Midwest is pretty vicious). Two of them pleaded guilty to avoid getting the death penalty. Santine went to trial and was convicted of aggravated murder, but not capital murder, and got life in prison. One of the hitters, Getsy, also went to trial and was convicted of capital murder, but not the lesser included offense of aggravated murder, and was sentenced to death.

Santine and Getsy's convictions are on mutually exclusive theories - Santine's jury didn't believe that he hired hitters (but was somehow involved in the murder), while Getsy's jury believed he was hired by Santine to do the hit. In a federal habeas proceeding, Getsy basically argued that different juries can't return such contradictory verdicts. A panel of the Sixth Circuit agreed and vacated Getsy's death sentence. Rehearing en banc, the entire court (by an 8-6 vote) reversed and upheld the death sentence:

The majority explains that there is 'simply no constitutional guarantee that [Getsy’s] jury would reach the same results as prior or future juries dealing with similar facts.' All that matters is the due process requirement that the conviction was based on sufficient evidence, which it was.

I had a similar case when I worked in state court. My client and a codefendant robbed and murdered a man and drove his Jeep to Cleveland. Cleveland cops busted into the hotel room and arrested them, finding incriminating evidence in the process. They were prosecuted separately and each move to suppress the evidence recovered in Cleveland. Both lost suppression motions, went to trial, and were convicted. On appeal, the codefendant won on the suppression issue and eventually copped a plea to a lesser offense. My client, on the other hand, lost on appeal and was stuck with his life sentence. We weren't successful in habeas proceedings making arguments similar to Getsy's.

The lesson? Don't expect logical consistency from the criminal justice system. It'll just make your head hurt.

Watching Your Language in Court

Time has an interesting article about a long-running rape prosecution in Nebraska that is raising First Amendment issues. In October 2004, Pamir Safi had sex with college student Tory Bowen in Lincoln, Nebraska. Safi claim the sex was consensual. Bowen claims she was too drunk to consent and had possibly been drugged. Safi stood trial for rape last October. Because the only issue was consent, the judge ruled that several words were off limits to attorneys and witnesses, including "rape" itself. Although article references "Nebraska law" as the basis for this decision, but all states and the federal courts have similar rules allowing judges to exclude testimony that is too prejudicial to a party.

That trial ended in a hung jury. Bowen claimed that her testimony was not particularly effective because she was too concerned with violating the judge's order. A retrial was set to start this spring, but Bowen refused to abide by the judge's order. Protesters showed up outside the courthouse. A petition was circulated objecting to the judge's order. As a result, the judge declared a mistrial during jury selection. Bowen has now gone to federal court, claiming the order violates her First Amendment rights.

On a broad basis, that argument surely won't fly. Lawyers and witnesses are bound by the rules of evidence, which restrict what can be said in court. Cops can't talk about evidence that has been suppressed due to Fourth Amendment violations. Prosecutors can't tell the jury about a defendant's prior convictions (in most cases). Defendants can't spin evidence-free conspiracy theories as a defense.

Does that mean the state trial judge has unlimited discretion in putting certain words off limits? Probably not. But it's hard to see that discretion not extending to be able to keep a witness from calling the defendant "a rapist" - after all, that's what the jury is there to decide.

Opportunity Wouldn't Knock on Jane Austen's Door

As if being homely isn't bad enough, apparently Jane Austen would have trouble getting published if she was writing today. At least that's what UK's The Guardian is reporting. The directory of Bath's Jane Austen Festival took some slightly rewritten hunks of several Austen novels, including Pride and Prejudice, and sent them to publishers under the name "Alison Laydee" to see if they'd attract the interest of the modern market. All of them were rejected, without only one publisher specifically noting that the work appeared to be a rip off. Other publishers, contacted afterwards, claimed that they returned form rejected letters but had, in fact, taken note of the plagiarism.

What's this supposed to prove? Not much, I think. Whatever Austen's charms (I read P&P in high school and it was OK) and however timeless her stories might be, her style is surely dated. Is it surprising that any publisher would think twice before signing up an author writing in 19th-century style? I'd imagine that even the best purveyor of vaudeville in the 21st century would have problems selling it.

Still a neat stunt, tho'.

You Can't Spell "Clusterfuck" Without "Iraq"

It's hardly news anymore that the situation in Iraq is a complete mess, with dozens of people dying every day. But the events of today seem to crystallize the situation perfectly. In Malaysia, the Iraqi national team squeaked past South Korea in the semifinals of the Asian Cup. They meet Saudi Arabia in the final on Sunday. It's the first time that Iraq has advanced to the final of its regional championship. For a nation that's taken so much shit over the years, it should be a time of celebration. And, for a while it was. Until the suicide bombers showed up:

Car bombers targeted throngs of Iraqis on Wednesday as they spilled into Baghdad streets to cheer a national soccer victory, killing at least 50 people and leaving scores more wounded.

Attacking revelers in the Mansour district of western Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed at least 30 people and wounded 75, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.

Later, in the southeastern neighborhood of Ghadir, a second car bomb killed at least 20 and wounded at least 60, the official said. The attack is near an Iraqi army checkpoint.

For fuck's sake!

Why I Like Harry Potter

I've not read one word of the Harry Potter books. I've seen only one of the films. I'm not trying to be smug about it or anything, they're just not my cup of tea. But I like the books on principle, for one simple reason. As Dave over at Orcinus points out:

my enjoyment of the books is enhanced by the knowledge that it also drives the fundamentalist right nuts. Ever since the books gained great popularity, they've been on the warpath against Harry Potter, as you can see from the excerpt from Jesus Camp above, in which we see the head of the camp telling children that Potter should be put to death.

Meanwhile, CLS over at Classically Liberal catalogs a whole load of fundie fatwas against Harry Potter. Any work of art that whips the thumpers into such a frenzy is OK in my book!

Mid-Ohio - The Cars

This weekend at Mid-Ohio showcased three major racing series - the American LeMans Series, Speed World Challenge, and Indy Racing League. One of the great things about road racing is that the paddock is open to just about anybody, so you can get up close and personal with the cars (and, to some extent, the drivers).

The highest-profile series this weekend, in my mind anyway, was the ALMS, which had a 2 hour 45 minute race on Saturday. ALMS has four classes that run simultaneously, which means in addition to racing for position in your class, there's lots of traffic to dodge, weave, and generally avoid. Two classes, P1 and P2, are prototypes - ground up purpose-built race cars made with lots of high tech parts and materials (in fact, ALMS dubs their cars "the real cars of tomorrow"). They are remarkable machines, descendants of my beloved GTP and Group C cars from the 1980s and 1990s. The look and sound terrific. They are what a lot of people think of when they picture a "race car."

P1 cars are generally bigger and more powerful than P2 cars, but on tight US tracks they are remarkably equal in terms of lap times. In fact, a P2 car won overall at Mid-Ohio. The leaders in P1, for years, have been Audi, first with the all-conquering R8 and now with the turbo diesel powered R10. Sadly, I didn't get any paddock pics of the R10s. I did, however, get some of their competition in P1. First up, the Judd-powered Creation of Intersport:


They've struggled for pace this year, but the car has potential (it outran the Audis at Road Atlanta and Laguna Seca last year, IIRC). And it looks cool as hell. The other P1 car I spotted was the Cytosport AER-Lola:


This car belonged to the Dyson team last year and was scary fast, but fragile. That trend continues in the hands of its new owner. As you can see from this shot of the inside endplate of the rear wing, not everybody has warm fuzzies for Audi:


Note the Audi R8 road car there in the background. That's art, kids.

Speaking of Dyson, they've moved to the P2 category this year with a pair of Porsche RS Spyders:


The same model, in the hands of the Penske team, won the race, both overall and in P2. Sadly, I didn't score any pics of the Acura-powered cars, the Lowes-sponsored Lola that was my nephew's favorite or either of the two Courage-based cars that are simply stunning.

The other two classes in ALMS are GT1 and GT2, for production based race cars with varying levels of modifications. GT1 was once overrun with Ferrari 550 Maranellos, Aston Martin DBR9s, and Saleen SR7s doing battle with the factory Corvettes. Unfortunately, the financial requirements of running a successful GT1 program have driven everyone but the Vettes from the field. No pics of the Vettes, therefore.

GT2, on the other hand, is a very diverse field. The cars in GT2 are closer to stock, but still significantly modified for racing. For years, the dominant car, in both numbers and results, was a variant of the Porsche 911. Porsche sells turn-key racecars and provides top-flight support at the track, which leads to success and a lot of customers. In recent years, the 911 has been joined in GT2 by Ferrari, first with the 360 and now the 430, and Panoz, each enjoying a bit of success. Here are a pair of Ferrari 430s (red, naturally) from the Risi Competizione stable:


Sunday saw races in both of the Speed World Challenge categories, Touring and GT. Touring cars are generally small sedans and hatchbacks, with the World Challenge featuring cars from Mazda, BWM, Acura, and Audi. Here is the race-winning BWM 328 of Joey Hand:


Hand had a massive wreck at Mid-Ohio last year in a GrandAm GT BWM, so it was nice to see him bounce back with a win. He made a last lap pass at The Keyhole past Chip Herr and his Audi A4:


Not everybody finished the Touring race near the front. Randy Pobst, an ex-autocrosser who has won in both World Challenge classes this year, disappeared about midway through the race. We happened to be watching it in The Keyhole behind an older gentleman who, it turned out, was Randy's dad! This is how Randy made it back to the paddock:


The final race of the weekend was the GT race, which features a bevy of big-bore sports cars, including Porsche 911s, Corvettes, Dodge Vipers, and a pair of seriously depraved Cadillac CTS-Vs. Here's the Corvette of Sonny Whelen:


His team mate, Eric Curran, won the race.

Why no IRL pics? Well, two reasons. First, it was hard to get close enough to the IRL cars (they got the covered garage spaces) without getting all the mechanics, too. Second, IRL cars are straight-up fugly. I mean absolutely heinous. They look better from a distance!

So, that was my weekend. The crowd, as I mentioned in the other post, was huge. Easily the largest we'd ever seen there. One of the vendors said it was the largest crowd they'd seen in 10 years. The IRL race on Sunday was delayed partly due to the line of folks still trying to get in! I hope that's a good sign for the future of American road racing.

Mid-Ohio - The Track

Last weekend, I trekked north to the wilds of Ohio's Irish Hills (Ohio also has a Welsh Bypass - go figure) to enjoy a big weekend of racing at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. My brother and his son joined me midday on Saturday to take in racing from the American LeMans Series, Speed World Challenge, and the Indy Racing League. The weather was beautiful (I have the sun burn to prove it!), the crowd huge (see the apology/thanks for patience on the track's website), and the racing intense and fairly clean.

I did a two-day driving school at Mid-Ohio a couple of years ago. It's a wonderful circuit, the very definition of an honest-to-gods road course. It's serpentine layout covers 2.25 miles, undulating with the terrain to produce one of the most challenging race tracks in North America. I took lots of pictures over the weekend and tried to put together a decent collection here to show folks what it's like (click here for a nifty little map).

Turn 1 is a fast 90-degree left hander that leads down to a tricky 180-degree right hander called The Keyhole. Here's a view of the straight leading out of Turn 1 into The Keyhole:


On the inside of the straight there is a chicane that doesn't get used for pro races. Here's the rest of The Keyhole:


It's hard to tell from those pictures, but The Keyhole is actually downhill, which means as you are turning right, the car is trying to fall off the edge of the Earth to the left. It's a critical corner, as it sets up a run down the long back straight and into Turn 5, the best overtaking area. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of Turn 5. Sorry.

The next pic is what happens after Turn 5, a 90-degree right-hander. The track then begins a series of corners that charge up and down hills, known collectively as Madness. It was my favorite part of the track and a great place to watch a race. Here is a view from the bottom of that first hill, as a couple of GT3 Porsches climb over the hill:


Again, the natural terrain fights what you want the car to do - as you crest the hill and try and head left to get the correct line for the right-hander at the bottom of the hill, the car pushes relentlessly to the right and wants to go off track. Fun stuff.

Next we see that right-hander at the bottom of the hill, which leads up under the Honda/Acura bridge and back uphill. Here with a pair of ALMS P2 cars at full chat:


Here's a reverse angle, with the rise up under the bridge (conveniently enough with a Speed WC Touring Acura in flight):


At the top of that hill is another off-camber corner, this one a right-hander, that dumps into Thunder Valley, a sweeping uphill run. Here we see an the ALMS Flying Lizard GT2 Porsche pounding away (and some slack jawed yokel spotting a UFO):


Thunder Valley comes to a end with a much quicker than it looks left-hander. In the school cars, a quick blip on the brakes to settle the front end was all the braking you needed before getting back on the throttle. Get it wrong, however, and it's off in the gravel trap. It was amazing to watch the IRL cars flit through that corner. Here it is during the IRL support race practice session:


After a little crest in the track, things settle down for a long right-hander, The Carousel, that leads back onto the front straight. Getting The Carousel right is critical to getting down the front stretch with as much speed a possible. My golden lap at the school included knowing that I got The Carousel right because I ran out of gear by Turn 1. Here's one of the ALMS Porsche RS Spyder P2 cars during the race:


That, in a nutshell, is Mid-Ohio. Keep in mind that the IRL cars and ALMS prototypes were getting around there in between 65 and 70 seconds and you get a sense of how fast it is.

That's the scene. Next - the combatants.

Hard Hat Area

I'm playing around with a new look, including a new template. Importing the new template destroyed all my links, so they'll be AWOL for a little while. Don't feel left out if your blog doesn't appear for a few days as I work things through.

Every Generation Throws a Hero Up the Pop Chart

I'm somewhat chuffed to pronounce that my latest musical concoction, "In the Wreckage of Our Ambitions," surged to #6 today (before I reviewed and bumped several other tracks) on the Progressive Electronica chart over at ACIDPlanet. The charts are based on a combination of ratings left during reviews (only available to ACIDPlanet members) and number of listens within a certain time period. So thanks to the non-ACIDPlanet folks out there who take a listen and boost my numbers!

This Week's Forecast - Light Blogging, 30% Chance of Meaningful Posts

I'm on vacation this week, leading to the big ALMS/IRL weekend at Mid-Ohio. That means there probably won't be a lot of action at the Ranch this week. Particularly if, like today, the rest of the week involves power tools, cursing, and pictogram furniture assembly instructions. I may redesign the blog's look, if I get sufficiently motivated.

Be back next week!

Fresh Tunes

Remember a while back when I had a musical breakthrough? Well, I finally finished that track this afternoon. I present "In the Wreckage of Our Ambitions" for your enjoyment. A little more epic than I intended, but still pretty cool (if I may say so myself).

Born Again Jacknuts

TPM Cafe has news (and video) of an appalling spectacle this morning in the Senate. You know hot the born again fundies during establishment debates feign neutrality? "Why, of course, we wouldn't mind if the Muslim crescent was included in this display" - that sort of stuff. Well, these jackasses didn't get the memo:

Today was a historic first for religion in America's civic life: For the very first time, a Hindu delivered the morning invocation in the Senate chamber — only to find the ceremony disrupted by three Christian right activists.

* * *

The three protesters, who all belong to the Christian Right anti-abortion group Operation Save America, and who apparently traveled to Washington all the way from North Carolina, interrupted by loudly asking for God's forgiveness for allowing the false prayer of a Hindu in the Senate chamber.

'course this kind of thing wouldn't happen if we didn't feel the need to start the government day with a plea to the invisible sky king. Time for a rousing chorus of "Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk."