Amy's Robot

I'm the sort of person who reads books. Therefore, I am qualified to review the new book Mysterious Stranger by David Blaine, the famous, darkly handsome street magician who gained fame recently through three major stunts: entombing himself in the sidewalk, being encased in a block of ice, and standing on (then leaping from) an 80-foot pillar in Bryant Park.

Blaine's book is part memoir, part how-to guide, and part history of magic. The three elements blend well, although the directions on how to perform various tricks occasionally seem somewhat shoe-horned in with the autobiographical narrative. However, this creates an unusual structure that makes the book quite engaging, even if you don't have an interest in actually performing the tricks. If you've seen Blaine on any of his television specials, you may have been captivated by the simple beauty of his tricks and his laid-back style. This style comes across in his writing, which is very natural and vivid. His writing is less dynamic during his long histories of magic and magicians, specifically in a chapter dedicated to Houdini. I can't be sure, but some of these passages read as though they were ghost-written, or at least heavily edited. That's not a complaint, because the rest of the book is sufficiently personal to compensate for it.

Perhaps the books most interesting chapters are the last three, which details the three major televised stunts he has performed. He discusses the preparation and execution of each of the stunts, as well as his state of mind during each of them, which in most cases can most succinctly be described as "out of it". These passages are particularly interesting if you've actually seen his stunts either in person or on TV.

Blaine also frequently discusses his relationship with his (now deceased) mother, who he obviously loved very much, and seems to have served as a motivation for his success. Blaine comes off as very down-to-earth, daring, practical, focused, and hard-working. Unlike other autobiographies, he does not really attempt to exaggerate his own contributions to magic, but seems almost over-whelmed and flattered by the success he has experienced.

All in all, the book is an entertaining and fast read that gives you great insight into Blaine's character and methodology, and will teach you a few tricks of your own, if you are interested.

Once again, the New York Times reminds us that moderate drinking is good for you. In a study of 80,000 American women, "not drinking at all was as bad for the heart as morbid obesity." Start your new health regime tonight, people.

Mecca-Cola: for when you want to express your hatred for America through reactionary consumer trends.

Guess this will get blogged everywhere, but the NYT says that E=MC² might have to be revised to account for the color of the light wave in question, or the orientation of a clock in space.

Now that Richard Harris is dead, whoever will play the headmaster in the Harry Potter movies? Michael Gambon, who has also played the adulterous leering swine murder victim in Gosford Park, and the abusive, vulgar rapist husband in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover.

Fametracker on Dennis Quaid: the greatest comeback of the 21st century. So far. Let me tell you, last I heard about Dennis Quaid, there were pictures of him all over the Post dancing on the bar at Hogs n' Heifers with some hooker. He was All Washed Up. Then the other night I go see Far From Heaven, and holy smokes, he is back. Hope he wins the Golden Globe. He deserves it after getting dumped for that warthog Russell Crowe.

The Times explains why everything in the whole world is closed for 2 weeks this holiday season. Hopefully devoted readers are understanding of the recent slow pace of posts on the 'bot. Don't worry: we're back at work now.

Soundtrack to 8 Mile. Features songs from and, yes, "inspired by" the movie, including a forgettable track by the girl who played Em's first girlfriend in the movie. The hip-hop stuff is good though, with a contribution from Xzibit being probably the most interesting track. Obie Trice is heavily featured too -- I guess Em has decided to christen him, though I'm not sure why: one track consists almost exclusively of Obie rhyming the word "motherf*cker" with itself. Meanwhile, regrettably missing are the actual raps from the battles. I mean, come on. I want to relive that shit.

Speaking of reliving, Xzibit reminds me I saw his associates Tha Alkaholics way back in '93 at the Flood Zone, opening up for Tribe. Busta was there too, special guesting on "Scenario".

Catch Me If You Can. Wow, Spielberg made a movie that isn't hopelessly maudlin and manipulative. Sure, there's a potent dose of schmaltz, but not so much as to be overwhelming. Leonardo is charming, but Christopher Walken steals the show while Tom Hanks muddles his Boston accent throughout. The story draws some of the usual parallels between the hunter and the hunted, but it works and establishes character and motivation. Spielberg was wearing his rose-colored glasses, apparently, as the movie makes no mention of anyone who was hurt by Abagnale's fraudulent ways -- it even leaves out the devastation likely experienced by his main love interest. Still, a light touch (for Spielberg) in this one -- simple structure, simple plot, and just some straightforward story-telling.

Here's a decent, relatively hype-free article about switching from a PC to a Mac. Most of these types of articles are useless because they are written by people who have actually been using Macs for 15 years, or by thinly-veiled hacks for Apple, or by people who don't know anything about computers. Consequently, the articles tend to be not very informative and very superficial and gushy. This one's a little better.

Anyway, my Mac (running Jaguar) still crashes every now and then, so, yeah, switching isn't going to solve everything.

Wait. What?? Brittany Murphy and Ashton Kutcher are a couple? Jesus. How did I miss this? NYT has a backpages "A Night Out With..." piece about the two of them. Barf.

Eminem has an interview in his hometown paper, the Detroit Free Press. Em concludes: "I may be getting too big for my own good." Also, he has himself on a self-imposed curfew. And -- surprise! -- he and Kim are living together again.

Notice how eerily similar the new Charlie's Angels movie poster design is to the cover of Loverboy's seminal 1981 album Get Lucky, my all-time favorite album cover? [via T-rock] Additional reason why CA: Full Throttle will be outstanding: Crispin Glover is in it.

Christo is planning to wrap Central Park. The official site has more info about it.

NYT on drug- and bomb-sniffing dogs. Sometimes, the dogs lie ("lie" as in tell falsehoods, not "lie" as in lie down.)

Here's a lengthy NYT treatment of the new WTC proposals. Ok, look, let me make it more explicit: the goal of creating something "important" at Ground Zero is impossible if the developers stick with their hotel/mall/offices paradigm. There is nothing at all important about hotels, malls, and offices, no matter how revolutionary their design might be. To build something with a real legacy, they need to put up things like schools, parks, and community centers. Just after 9/11, everbody was talking about how Ground Zero was a battlefield, how it was hallowed ground, etc. But, then, within a few days, the Port Authority and the people who had just leased the site starting floating ideas about the new office towers they were going to build there. Let me tell you something: we didn't put a mall in the fields of Gettysburg -- we left it the way it was -- and we shouldn't put a mall over Ground Zero.

The Onion presents their least essential albums of 2002, which isn't that big a deal in itself, but the notes on Deepak Chopra's "Oceans of Ecstasy" album are almost unbelievable, and we also learn that Toto released an all-covers album, featuring "Could You Be Loved" by Bob Marley and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." [via T-Rock]

As an addendum to ADM's commentary on the design proposals for the post-WTC Lower Manhattan: What The FUCK. Note to Development Corp: hideous piles of curvy metal and lots of pointy, goofy spires and crap is not an honor to anybody, except maybe to the terrorists, who destroyed buildings so elegant and cool that we are apparently unable to think up any comparable designs.

Whenever 3,000 people die somewhere, you should always make sure that you put 6 million square feet of office space, a mall, and a hotel on their deathsite. Otherwise, THEY have won. Besides, anything else might be boring.

One of our favorite blogs, Fimoculous, had a lot of interesting stuff yesterday.

The police commissioner keeps claiming it, but now I guess it's true: New York is the safest big city in the country.

Interview with a down-to-earth Zadie Smith in today's NYT.

Oh you do NOT want to piss off those Italian transit workers: their whole country's public transportation workers are on strike.

NYT has a lengthy piece on the way psychological stress messes with your body. Yep.

So, Adaptation. Saw it Friday. Now, I don't wanna ruin it for anybody, but let me just say: 2/3 of it are brilliant, but 1/3 needs a lot of work. I won't say which third. I guess a lot of people will have a similar opinion, and then smart kids and cool kids will be like, "Yeah, but, dude, you don't get it...it's like a joke...." LET ME SAY THIS LOUD AND CLEAR: I get the joke. I just don't think it's funny.

PS. Chris Cooper (recently spotted by the 'Bot on 72nd and Lex) is amazing in it. Nicolas Cage is better than ok, finally.

PPS. Let's play six degrees: Spike Jonze is married to Sofia Coppola. Sofia Coppola is the cousin of Nicolas Cage. Can you connect the dots to Amy's Robot?

NYT has an ambivalent piece on Tom Petty, whose latest album is, well, just okay. Now I'm a big fan -- got all his albums, just about -- but the new one is so jingoistic as to be unartful. The songs don't flow, he has to do lyrical cartwheels to say what he wants to say, and none of it really sticks in your brain. Tom, you can be a rebel without saying you're a rebel.

Diamond Dave is suing Van Halen... again... but even better, he also produced a video-pitch for his own reality show. E! reports: "Roth also taped a weird promo video titled David Lee Roth's No Holds Bar-B-Que, which featured him dressed up like a sailor and doing karate moves during a luau that featured pirates, dwarves and real martial artists. The video was supposedly Roth's bid to get TV executives to award him his own Osbourne-esque reality show.

Needless to say, no network bit."

Salon and Amy's Robot both think J. Lo is one of the most over-exposed, under-used actresses around. Skank, yes. But with real potential.

So, I guess Gangs of New York isn't really historically accurate, as this very thorough article (in the Daily News, of all places) details. Maybe it doesn't matter anymore.

Look at the pathetic, pretentious posturing in the article about Moby getting attacked in Boston. Everybody is so fucking stupid. Yeah, idiots have trouble accepting alternative approaches to masculinity, and yeah, that sometimes results in violence...but everything else in this article is crap.

No strike yet, but are the subway workers messing with us already? [nyt]

Andy Richter, an old favorite of at least half of Amy's Robot, gets some positive press from Salon.

Google has a new shopping search engine: Froogle. Tells you the cheapest price for whatever you want. Don't forget about their older, cooler catalog search engine though, which shows you pages from lots of catalogs.

Sad news for the prog-indie kids: Mary Hansen from Stereolab died. [via D-Mo]

Todays' NYT Circuits has a whole special report about wireless internet access via WiFi, the standard for medium-range wireless communication. I guess they think it's a big deal, since they already had a big article about it a couple weeks ago.

A racy clip from "Mr Show" somehow interrupted a morning newscast in Salt Lake. Everybody's mad, but nobody know how it happened.

Don't you wanna grow up to be just like me? Everywhere you look, it's gangstas and gangsters. Not really news, I guess: TV/pop culture makes people act weird.

The New York Times rightly asks, "Why do mobsters keep talking on the phone?"

The rest of Napster's assets are up for auction today (Wednesday): laptops, servers, and keychains. You can join the auction beginning at 9 am.

I know what you've been thinking. You've been like, "here we are, 6 weeks into the second mind-blowing season of 24, and nary a peep from Amy's Robot? Why should I go on living?" Well, move the hacksaw away from your neck. Yes, we're watching, and yes, it's good. It's...well it's pretty good.

Also especially good lately has been Television Without Pity's recaps, which are definitely richer when a show is past its rocky first season (i.e. when there aren't any characters randomly getting amnesia or suffering other insulting plot devices.) Here they are on US reactions to alleged terrorist activity originating in a fake Middle Eastern nation:

"Anyway, the Fauxraqistanis insist that they have brought several Second Wave members in for questioning, and that they're making stellar progress in clamping down on terrorist activity in their country. Yulin whips out some satellite photos taken today which show that terrorist activity is still taking place in Fauxraqistan. Um, what? Palmer had a conversation with the Prime Minister of Fauxraqistan three hours ago. What kind of progress was Yulin expecting? And what's in those aerial photos that prove that "terrorism is still taking place"? Is some Fauxraqi terrorist marching band lining up to form the letters "America sucks donkey cock" on a football field?"

Transit strike looming NYC. Bloomberg says he'll ban vehicles with fewer than 4 passengers from entering Manhattan. Other interesting measures are described in the article.

First Queens, now the Barrio...NYC's hippest neighborhoods follow Amy's Robot.

Finally, some decent details about Winona: maybe she's all f'd up on pain meds...This article has details of all her prescription purchases, theories about why she did it, etc. More great reporting from the E! channel.

Winona, it's me. ADM. Yeah. Listen, I want to let you know that despite all these problems you've been having, I would still marry you. Really.

Call me. Let's talk.

Guns n' Roses has scrapped their poorly-selling tour, after Axl flaked out again and caused the second riot in a month. For crying out loud. [via Whiskas]

Great piece about the writer Susan Orlean, whose non-fiction book (and partially-fabricated personal life) the new Spike Jones movie Adaptation is sort of based on. She was embarrassed to take her parents to see the movie: "The movie is geared 'for the post-post-modern generation,' she said, not for visiting parents from Cleveland who might worry that their daughter is ruining her reputation."

In the Times: Eurotrash is back.

"'Look, there's that beautiful girl I met in Monaco last summer,' said Jean Bernard Fernandez-Versini, 21, a New York University student from France, who summers on the Riviera, spends winter vacations in St. Barts and took last year off just to party."

World conquest is imminent. [via King Pigeon, Lord of Eurotreasure]

NYT reports on BP's efforts to appear to be an environmentally-friendly oil company. Maybe you've seen all those annoying billboards? Article features an aerial picture of Prudhoe Bay, the oil field in northern Alaska I recently visited.

NY Times has a piece on how MSNBC is struggling, which isn't really news, but the article summarizes all the issues. The problem is that they aren't as showy as Fox News and not as informative as CNN, and even CNN isn't really all that informative anymore: One recent afternoon its news anchors, Daryn Kagan and Leon Harris, interviewed Kermit the Frog about the Muppet's recent television movie. One possible for solution for MSNBC's woes is a certain former professional wrestler/governor.

Bjork's greatest hits CD is out. You can listen to all the tracks here, if you fill out a little form.

Here's some more on acrylamide, the fried-food poison that was in the news earlier this year.

Roone Arledge, one of the most influential figures in television history, has died. NYT has a lengthy obit.

The FBI thinks Whitey Bulger might be dead! Wow.

This guy, a big time computer programmer, is also a poet. Some of his poems cross into the computer world. Talks about the connection between poetry and programming, a subject close to my heart. [via slashdot] What people need to realize (programmers, I mean), is that it's not just about making something work: it's about having a cohesive and coherent structure to your work, and making it elegant.

Salon's gossip column (aka "celebrity research") has some funny stuff today.

Suicide bomber game, as reported by the NYT. Other games on the site include Sniper, and WTC Jumper.

One of my favorite shows from last year, Insomniac, is starting its third season Thursday night at 10:30 on Comedy Central. Dave Attell, the drinking man's drinking man, will be visiting cities such as Nashville, Little Rock, and Cleveland and experiencing their respective nightlives, such as they are. He has some interesting comments on the stunts that people are pulling to get on the show, now that it's gained some popularity: he says "we're running out of weird."

A recent NPR interview about sex and technology suggests that the porn market is responsible for the fast development of most of the interactive technology of the past few years, like streaming video and these new remote touch-glove things, and also for the triumph of VHS over the superior Betamax back in the '80's. [via Whiskas, who is not sure how she feels about all this]

John Rawls died last week. I guess that made sense for everybody in the end. Now, some people are questioning his ideas and approaches.

More DJs are using CD players instead of or along with vinyl. Quotes from Cut Chemist and Q-bert.

People who are being treating with radiation are being stopped by police armed with terrorist-sensing devices: In a case about a month ago, a woman who had undergone a diagnostic heart study was stopped while trying to drive out of Manhattan through a tunnel. [NYT]

Rights for chickens. Another article in the NYT's apparent effort to raise awareness about factory farms.

What is this, Fight Club? Ikea in the Netherlands has been bombed.

Professional trainspotters for the NYC subway system. [nyt]

I want to say something about branding countries with logos, etc: I like Canada's logo the best. It's simple and to-the-point, and it makes their country very approachable. I was thinking about it, and I decided that this country will never have a logo because no one would be able to decide who should initiate or control the project. Congress or the President? Congress or the President? If the president proposed it, would Congress have to approve it? Wouldn't they insist? Wouldn't they have "notes" on the design? Wouldn't it be a big mess that ended in something scary and terrible like this?

While we're on the subject, let me just add that Canada's federal government has a web site that you can access with your cell phone! You can get MP's phone numbers and everything! They are way ahead of us up there.

Poland has been rebranded with a new logo.

IKEA has become an indentifier for liberal, poor Americans who want to pretend they are rich. And here I am thinking their prices are too high.

Mayor Bloomberg encountered hardly any resistance at all at yesterday's public hearing about his proposed property tax increase--the largest the city has ever had. Maybe because it was held at 7:30 AM.

Britney Spears has been having a hard year, and now she's lost all traces of the underage innocent slut act: she's turned 21.

Asperger syndrome. [NYT]

British military covered up UFO sighting in 1980. I guess it was midget aliens, though.

Ben Affleck has gotten a lot of crap here at the Robot. And for good reason. He sucks. Even though I bet when you first saw him, probably in Chasing Amy in 1997, you thought "Yeah, that guy's OK, but I hate the goatee" like I did. But you probably also thought "Yeah, this is OK" the first time you heard that infernal song by the Spin Doctors, "Two Princes", in 1993, like I did. Boy, were we wrong.

So now, Fametracker has re-audited Ben Affleck, with the conclusion that despite having no talent and having made terrible choices and having never carried a movie on his own acting abilities or charm or even looks, he is a STAR STAR STAR STAR.

Washington Post has a piece on the Federal Witness Protection program, and the problems it can create. Interesting intro.

The film version of the Graham Greene novel The Quiet American is finally getting released after long delays--its unsympathetic attitude towards Americans in Vietnam has kept it out of the US until now. It also turns out that the FBI was keeping tabs on Graham Greene during his lifetime.