Blizzahd of '05

Wow. I wasn't in the country for the blizzard of 78, but I've heard all the stories from family and neighbors. I'll tell you what though, there was a HELL of a lot of snow here a couple of days ago. I just saw a story on the local news about a guy who attacked somebody on Beacon Hill over a parking space. I can't imagine what kind of bloodshed there was in ol' East Boston because of "throwing snow on my property" or "messing up my pile" or the most traditional "I'm reserving these five spaces". See the "space wars" post for more...

There isn't a place to put it all. Out here there is a constant pile of snow 3 feet high along all the roads and sidewalks. Some of the drifts the morning of the blizzard were higher than I was (I speak of my height, of course). I must admit, though, it wasn't devastating around here, particularly since the snow was somewhat light and easy to move, at least that morning. It just kept snowing and snowing and snowing. Fluffy, but ample. It was the drifts that had the biggest effect. The Cape, on the other hand, got absolutely slammed.

Then there are those people who for one reason or another just don't know how to deal with snow. When I stepped out Sunday morning, there was this guy with his hazards on blocking the entrance to my complex. It was obvious he was very stuck. I recruited a neighbor and we went over to help. It turned out this guy was Brazilian, new to the country, and driving an extremely light car, complete with balded tires. Great. After an hour, we got him back out onto the road, and into one of the few plowed lots nearby. Since the blizzard was raging strong, I got a good amount of snow stuck to every hair on my face....and I had the great idea of trying to grow a full beard...

Looks like we'll have 7-10 more inches tonight, though it's negligible relative to Sunday. Eh, I have my space...

P2P Scapegoating

This is ridiculous. "A bill introduced in California's Legislature last week has raised the possibility of jail time for developers of file-swapping software who don't stop trades of copyrighted movies and songs online." Why not...we as Americans have already established a pattern of blaming and going after whoever we can when it comes to losing money. In regards to a manufacturer's culpability for illegal use of their product, however, another standard has already been established.

Do we go after the makers of VCRs because their technology can be used to duplicate protected television programming? How about computer companies who include CD and DVD burners that can be used to dub songs and movies? How long have we been taping things on the radio, making mix tapes, and passing these tapes out to our friends? It's one thing if somebody is, say, running a dub-house, trying to turn a profit on copyrighted material; it's another if we want a friend to listen to music with us.

So, sure, the bill doesn't try to hold the makers of file-swapping software responsible for illegal use of thier product. It rather tries to make them financially responsible for potential losses because they don't apparently prevent it from happenning. Hmmmm. Uh, yeah, there's a clear difference there....

They go so far as to claim that the only use for file-swapping software is to trade copyrighted files illegally, and that's what makes this case different than the others. The fact is, we need file sharing software. As our usage, even reliance, on communcating with each other through various technologies increases, so too should the efficiency with which to do so. This leads to the development of things like recieving email on a cellphone, text messaging, instant messaging, voice and video chat...the point is we pass information on to each other all the time, whether it's your voice, a paragraph, a picture, or a song, and we need to be able to do it efficiently. Swapping copyrighted material is NOT why this software was made.

If people choose to use something as a means to illegal ends, why should the inventor feel the repercussions?

The Day After Tomorrow

I finally got around to watching "The Day After Tomorrow", the newest member of one of my favorite genres of movie: The Disaster Movie. This one had it all, and though panned by many critics, I think it may be the best Disaster movie yet.

This flic comes from the makers of "Independance Day", which in my opinion indirectly helped start the Disaster movie renaissance almost 10 years ago, packed full of computer-aided graphics/destruction and a classic scene where we saw the White House obliterated by a massive alien death beam. Technically not a Disaster movie, the film did make one thing clear: people like to see things get blown up in a big way.

That year another movie came out that set the bar for modern natural disaster movies: "Twister". Yeah, this is a movie I'd watch more than a few times, but, like so many other Disaster movies, it focuses only on one type or another. By the end of "The Day After Tomorrow", I'd seen not only the best simulated tornado sequence ever but also a brief but potent lightning storm, a couple of deadly hailstorms with bowling ball size hailstones, rapture-worthy hurricanes and blizzards, a mammoth tidal wave of water that sweeps into and wipes out the entire East Coast, and an unprecedented movie natural disaster: the fast moving, invisible wall of "insta-freeze" conditions, where the temperature drops down to 150 below zero in an impossibly short amount of time, ultimately freezing just about everything north of the . We're talking about stepping outside and being frozen solid within seconds, mammoth stylee. I swear I even saw a quick earthquake in there at one point too.

The only glaring natural disaters missing in this one were death by lava and death by asteroid, but hey, we can't have everything we want all the time. Interestingly, these two types of earthly devastation were the themes of 1997 and 1998, respectively, and a part of a Hollywood trend to release multiple movies with the same theme in the same year. We'll get to that in another post.



1997 saw a couple of volcano movies, one the aptly-named "Volcano", and the other "Dante's Peak". Neither was much to write home about. The Tomy Lee Jones/Anne Heche team up was a match made anywhere but in heaven, and Pierce Brosnan would do better sticking to british spy movies. Both had plots that were less than engaging and effects that were less than memorable...go ahead, try to name a scene from either. "The Day After Tomorrow" blows them both out of the water, or out of the crater, whatever...

In 1998 we saw a great tandem of Disaster movies, the star-studded, extinction-level, asteroid-obliterating duo of "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact". The former gets lots of props from people, and I'm no exception. It definitely ranks highly on the list of Disaster movies and once you get past Ben Affleck, you get a good 2.5 hours of entertainment. One thing "Armageddon" has that most Disaster movies don't is a good dose of comedy, and that's a big part of its appeal. As far as actual disaster footage, however, this movie doesn't have a whole hell of a lot of it. That's good in that substance is what makes it likeable, but bad in that it loses Disaster movie ranking points. Above all, you gotta love the idea of a Texas-sized piece of rock slamming into the planet, and a wiseass cast of characters ultimately saving the day. (Let's hear it for Mr. Pink and the Davie guy!)

"Deep Impact", on the other hand, was a great movie (part of my collection), but its plot had too much buildup and too little payoff. WAY too much Tea Leoni. This movie does win the prize for best tsunami in a movie, as a 50-foot tower of oceanic death came crashing into the east coast travelling faster than the speed of sound....yowsa. Too bad it's over in less than 4 minutes. I guess the producers were counting on Frodo and Yar to get the butts into the seats! You do have to give it up to Morgan Freeman as a cool, calm, and collected US President, though, and Bobby Duvall leading the ultra-heroic team of astronauts who ultimately save the world was worth it too.



"The Day After Tomorrow", based on pure disasteredness, is clearly the best natural disaster movie of all time. I even think the ending is the best. Instead of narrowly avoiding disaster or rebuilding thw white house, etc, this movie ends with the better part of North America buried under ice...and it seems it will stay that way for a while. What better way to set up a sequal than to end a movie with the remaining population of the United States being forced to move to and live in South and Central America? Here's a title" "The Dia After Manana - Montezuma's Revenge Was Nothing...".