I'll see you at the movies

For the past three years, I've been keeping track of all the movies I saw in the theater. In 2000, I saw 18 movies; in 2001, that figure went down to 15; and in 2002, thanks mainly to sudden onslaughts of filmgoing in the first two weeks of July and in the last week and a half of December, I saw 21 movies. This is the list:

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (1/14)
2. Ice Age (3/25)
3. Big Trouble (4/7)
4. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (5/21)
5. Spider-Man (5/28)
6. Scooby-Doo (6/17)
7. Minority Report (6/24)
8. Sunshine State (7/1)
9. Men in Black II (7/4)
10. Lilo & Stitch (7/8)
11. Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns (7/9)
12. The Powerpuff Girls (7/15)
13. Austin Powers in Goldmember (7/29)
14. Spirited Away (9/30)
15. Punch-Drunk Love (10/21)
16. Bowling for Columbine (11/4)
17. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (12/2)
18. Adaptation (12/23)
19. About Schmidt (12/24)
20. Catch Me If You Can (12/30)
21. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (12/31)

Because I'm a loser who doesn't have a girlfriend, I saw all of these movies except "Attack of the Clones" by myself, in various Los Angeles-area theaters. I saw "Attack of the Clones" with two friends at the McClurg Court theaters in Chicago while I was on vacation there.

Look back in horror

First, an update: the apartment complex maintenance man finally fixed my bathroom ceiling today; he's still got to come back for the finishing work (sanding and painting), but I don't really care how long that takes. It's good, because I was about to pull out the California Civil Code section that says it's illegal to have a leaky roof in an apartment (well, in legal lingo, but that's the net effect).

Anyway, I received a 2-year-old TV Guide recently to add to my collection. Since it happens to be the 2000 Fall Preview issue, let's reminisce about those days.

For years, TV Guide had a text-only cover on its Fall Preview issue, but recently, they've switched to having the biggest stars from sure hit shows on the Fall Preview covers. In 2000, those people were Geena Davis (ABC's "The Geena Davis Show"), Michael Richards (NBC's "The Michael Richards Show"), John Goodman (Fox's "Normal, Ohio"), and Bette Midler (CBS's "Bette").

Now, since the editors of TV Guide know nothing about TV anymore, they managed to pick perhaps the worst group of shows possible. None of these shows lasted to a second season, but two of them are imprinted on my brain from having to closed-caption them ("Geena Davis" and "Bette").

And on to the new 2000-01 shows that didn't get spotlighted on the cover:

Sunday: "Ed," NBC: This was the one new show from this season that I actually watched at home, at least once it moved to Wednesdays...and coincidentally, it's still on the air (after a move to Wednesdays). TV Guide called this "A Fall Preview Favorite."
"Hype," WB: Another "Fall Preview Favorite."
"Nikki," WB: Another show I had to closed-caption, made barely watchable by Nikki Cox's low-cut tops and short skirts. It lasted two seasons, which was surprising because nobody was watching it.

Monday: "Boston Public," Fox: A "Fall Preview Favorite," even before Jeri Ryan joined the cast.
"Yes, Dear," CBS: For some reason, this is still on the air.
"Tucker," NBC: A sitcom about an inventor in the late 1940s who comes up with a new kind of car...oh, wait, no, it's an ultra-generic family sitcom starring Katey Sagal that ran for about a week and a half.
"Deadline," NBC: Hard to believe people would rather watch a sitcom about a newspaper writer on CBS ("Everybody Loves Raymond") than this drama about a newspaper writer about NBC, but they did.
"Girlfriends," UPN: I think this is still on, but since it's a UPN show, it's hard to tell.

Tuesday: "Dark Angel," Fox: This was a "Fall Preview Favorite," and TV Guide's description contains the line "She's a fox who's also part cat." Someone was very proud of themselves after coming up with that one, I'm sure. Oh, this lasted two seasons.
"Dag," NBC: Everyone watched this once to see if it was a spinoff of "JAG."

Wednesday: "Titans," NBC: A prime-time soap on NBC? An Aaron Spelling prime-time soap on NBC? It just didn't fit, and "Ed" was the beneficiary, going into a less competitive time slot where it's sat quietly for three seasons now.
"Welcome to New York," WB: Jim Gaffigan as a wacky weatherman from Indiana who becomes a wacky weatherman in New York, based on David Letterman's life story, except that Letterman went from being a wacky weatherman in Indiana to being a stand-up comic/writer in Los Angeles. So, in conclusion, it had very little to do with David Letterman's life story.
"The Street," Fox: This may be the one show that TV Guide managed to correctly predict the fate of: "This show's smug, smutty frat-boy sensibility seems like a bad investment of time."
"Gideon's Crossing," ABC: This show deserved to be canceled because they didn't send scripts to their closed-captioners, thus making it hard to accurately closed-caption the medical jargon.

Thursday: "Gilmore Girls," WB: Another "Fall Preview Favorite." I'm pretty sure that, if I were female, I'd be watching this instead of (or maybe in addition to) "Ed." As it is, I closed-captioned the first episode, but I've never seen it since...except when I took the Warner Bros. studio tour with my father in the summer of 2001 and we saw some of the sets.
"Cursed," NBC: This started out as a show about a man, played by Steven Weber, who was cursed by an ex-girlfriend. Then they dropped the "cursed by an ex-girlfriend" part of the show and changed the title to "The Steven Weber Show." It didn't help. Chris Elliott played the roommate, and even his presence couldn't save it. This is yet another show I closed-captioned.

Friday: "The Fugitive," CBS: One of this night's two "Fall Preview Favorites." Unlike the original version, this one got canceled with no resolution, causing its 6 or 7 regular viewers to post angry missives on the Internet.
"Freedom," UPN: The result of an experiment to see if a combination of premise, stars, network, and time slot could result in a show that absolutely nobody saw. The experiment was a success. (TV Guide's description begins "When the military takes over a shattered U.S. government in a bloodless coup," which is exactly what the kids want to see on Friday night.)
"The Trouble with Normal," ABC: In retrospect, it's a good thing this got canceled, because it allowed Paget Brewster to go on to "Andy Richter Controls the Universe"...
"Grosse Pointe," WB: ...and same deal with Irene Molloy. What are the odds of two actresses in separate shows premiering in the same time slot going on to be the two female characters in the same show during the very next TV season? Did I word that badly? Anyway, this show was also a TV Guide "Fall Preview Favorite," and if I'd had my TiVo in the fall of 2000 instead of not having it until the end of January 2001, I'd probably have sampled it.
"CSI," CBS: TV Guide said, "If only the characters were as animated as the evidence," implying that this show would certainly never be the number 1 show on TV.
"Freakylinks," Fox: This had about as many viewers as "The Fugitive," above; most people who tuned in the first time were disappointed when it turned out that it wasn't about rejects from the Johnsonville Brat factory.
"Level 9," UPN: The continuation of the experiment that began with "Freedom."
"Madigan Men," ABC: This show couldn't even hold onto the meager audience delivered to it by "Norm," Norm McDonald's sitcom, which preceded it on the schedule.

Saturday: "That's Life," CBS: This show is a complete mystery to me. I guess it existed, since there's a color picture right here in the TV Guide Fall Preview issue, with three women and their cleavage sitting in front of Paul Sorvino, and it was even a "Fall Preview Favorite" (the show, not the cleavage).
"The District," CBS: Come to think of it, this show is a mystery, too, and the only person in the picture is Craig T. Nelson, who isn't showing any cleavage.

By the way, the biggest disaster of the 2000-01 TV season is alluded to in the "Saturday" introductory paragraph: "ABC and NBC are showing movies [on Saturday night], although in the winter NBC turns the night over to bone-crunching games from wrestling guru Vince McMahon's new Xtreme Football League."

In conclusion, this TV season was fairly typical: there were a bunch of new shows, a few of which managed to survive into the next year, and even fewer that are still around two years later. (However, it was atypical in that I only started watching one new show, and even more atypical that that show was one of the "even fewer" that's still around two years later.)

Welcome to L.A.

On my way home from seeing a movie today ("About Schmidt"), I saw vehicles with license plates from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Alabama. What are all these people doing here?

Also, I had to take off my sunglasses and squint a little to read what it said across the top of the Alabama license plate, which was of a new design that I didn't recognize. It said "Stars Fell On," but it was in dark gold letters on a blue stripe. What happened to "Heart of Dixie"? Probably the same thing that happened to "Keystone State" on the Pennsylvania plate.

Public transportation from a parallel universe

This is a picture of the Chicago 'L' disguised as a New York City el. It's very amusing, especially since Chicago 'L' cars are much different-looking than New York subway cars; for one thing, 'L' cars are a lot smaller than subway cars because the curves are tighter. The actual cars used on the R line are long enough that they have four doors on each side.

Things we need to think through more carefully

Two items from a Transportation Security Administration press release:

• Put scissors, pocket knives and other sharp items in checked bags; never carried on.


• [F]or now, air travelers are advised to use cable or zip ties as an alternative to baggage locks.

Yes, but how is one supposed to cut open the cable or zip tie upon reaching one's destination, given that scissors and pocket knives have to be carried inside the bag that's closed with a cable or zip tie?

Working late

I got a UPS package delivered tonight...at 9:15.

In the year 2000

Today's entry in my page-a-day Lionel Trivia calendar reads as follows: "The General Civil War Locomotive set was released in conjunction of two events: the anniversary of the Civil War and the debut of Disney's file, The Great Locomotive Chase."

Now, I assume that in the digital future, there will come a time when movies are referred to as "files," but I hope I don't live to see it.

Let's get this straightened out

In the Christmas special "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (1964), the reindeer Donner is depicted as a male: Rudolph's father, in fact.

In the Christmas special "Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire" (1999), the reindeer Donner is depicted as a female. Since this show takes place an indeterminate number of years after the action depicted in "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," long enough for Rudolph to have had a son named Robbie and to have retired from guiding Santa's sleigh (not necessarily in that order), presumably, the female Donner is named after Rudolph's father.

The name should really be Donder, anyway, but that's another story.

The reason for the season

I sat down this evening to watch "Monday Night Football" and to simultaneously do my Christmas cards, equipped with my address book, my order of 40 Christmas cards (with my return address printed on the envelopes for the first time this year), and 40 37-cent stamps featuring whimsical snowmen.

The first step was to address all the envelopes. I did so, and only had one name left over in my address book, and it's someone I've never sent a Christmas card to before. "[This person] won't notice if [he or she] doesn't get one this year, either, so I'm fine," I thought to myself.

The second step was to put stamps on all the envelopes. Wait a minute, I had five more envelopes than stamps. "What the hell?" I thought to myself, and started counting the cards.

Now, in previous years, the Christmas cards I've ordered from this company have come with exactly as many blank envelopes as cards. But it seems that, if you order personalized envelopes, they print up and send a few extras. Five extra envelopes, as it turned out.

So the upshot is that I'm going to have to buy five extra Christmas cards to put in the five envelopes I've already addressed, and I might as well buy six so that left-out person can get one. And six of my Christmas cards are going to have "Spay or Neuter Your Pet" stamps on the envelopes instead of the whimsical snowmen. Oh, well, it's always the season to help control the pet population.

I hope it's a good movie

At the end of its capsule reviews of movies opening this weekend, L.A. Weekly lists other movies which they didn't review. This week, there was only one film in this category, and so that list read as follows:

Also released this week
Pandora's Box

This would have been much, much, much better if the first line had read "Also opened this week."

Also, you never would believe where those Keebler cookies come from

In "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," there's an elf that's a short, ugly little creature, yet in the "Lord of the Rings" movies, elves look like Cate Blanchett and Liv Tyler. I guess that's the difference between England and New Zealand.

On another note, I'm very sorry I made fun of Symantec's manual writing, although I'm only saying this because Norton Disk Doctor somehow managed to screw up my main hard drive.

Do we have to spell it out for you?

This is a quote from the manual for Norton SystemWorks for Mac, version 2.0, manual copyright 2002 by Symantec, Inc. "Using your existing Internet connection, you can register Nortom SystemWorks for Macintosh via the Internet (the global network of computers)." Let me reiterate that this manual was published in the year 2002, a year in which every single purchaser of Norton SystemWorks for Mac knows what the Internet is.

Punching in the PIN number at the ATM machine

Having used up most of my cash on a Papa John's pizza Monday night, I had occasion this morning to use the drive-through ATM that's conveniently along my route to work. When I turned around the corner, I was surprised to see that the ATM user in front of me was completely out of his car, standing in the driveway, between his car and the machine, to complete his ATM transaction.

First of all, this kind of disproves the stereotype that Californians don't like to get out of their cars. But also, given that I've heard tell of banks ordering bicycle riders to not use the drive-through ATMs, I wonder how this would have gone over if the bank had been open at the time, or if there was any way to see this particular ATM from inside this particular bank in the first place. (I assume there's a security camera or two somewhere, but who knows who's watching the feed and where they're located.)

Now, I couldn't tell whether the problem was that this guy had pulled up too far away from the ATM and didn't feel like putting his car into reverse and trying again or leaning way out the window, or if he didn't want to have to take what must be a walk of almost 20 feet to the walk-up ATMs from the closest (legal) parking space.