Amy's Robot

Fame Tracker's Drew Barrymore Fame Audit raises some serious issues about our old pal Drew, such as why she insists on being the sunniest, friendliest, happiest little kewpie-doll on the planet. The Amy's Robot Institute of Psychological and Emotional Dysfunction tells us that when people undergo some trauma at a young age, they revert to behavior associated with that age when in a stressful or anxiety-producing situation. Therefore, Drew is probably trapped in age 11, crawling around on the bathroom floor at Studio 54 trying to scrape up cocaine from the tile grouting.

Also: our celebrity spy sources tell us that Drew has been spotted at a Tribeca health food store buying some stuff, and that she is extremely short, and has bad skin. And there may be some elements of her character that seem not only irritating, but disingenuous. But: the woman's one successful entertainer. And I disagree with the FT blow-off of Charlie's Angels, for reasons detailed below.

NY Times on The New Tom Green Show, which is, surprisingly, MTV's first late-night comedy talk show. Tom realizes that in our post-Old Tom Green Show world, we can watch people eat worms on TV 24-7, so he'd better return to his other trademark: Candid Camera-style interactions with the world. Like asking Sally Jesse Raphael for some cash. He also comments on his disastrous marriage to Drew.

More news on Mel Gibson's The Passion: he attended Mass every morning during filming; he claims several non-Christian crew members converted to Christianity during production; there seem to now be subtitles. Way to sell out, Mel. -amy

I meant to post this last week, but I never got around to it: Anti-Defamation League's latest statement on the film. -adm

Mary Zimmerman, who directed the amazing Metamorphoses which closed recently, has a new play off-Broadway, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Sounds similarly cerebral and beautiful.

This movie was also much more self-aware: references to The Return of the Jedi (angels bursting naked out of the ceramic,) Raiders of the Lost Ark (drinking contest in Mongolia,) The Jerk, and its own television series. Also it generally had a more even level of comedy: everyone was jumping around and freaking out in the same hyper-active frenzy, which was an improvement over the stick-in-the-mud-ness of Bill Murray. He's funny, but he's no Bernie Mac, who operates much better in a movie like this.

Speaking of which, Bernie Mac's racial stereotype jokes were funny in themselves, but that kind of humor felt out of place in a movie like Charlie's Angels. As Ebert says, the Black Irish jokes were funny, as was his delivery of "It's raining white women", but overall, those jokes operated on another level of parody than the rest of the movie. CA was all giggly smirky winks and hot-pants-clad ass shaking, while Bernie Mac's jokes were more Chris Tucker, so questionable you can't help but shake your head and laugh. It didn't quite work.

Hey, and remember all the gossip surrounding the casting problems and script writing problems and Lucy Liu fighting with everyone on the set and hating her co-stars problems of the first movie? And how Thandie Newton, Victoria Beckham (then Adams), and Gwynnie were all considered for the role of the Third Angel? They've really gone to great lengths this time to at least appear like everyone loves each other.

However, I haven't laughed that hard and consistently at a movie in the theater since the opening weekends of Zoolander and the first Austin Powers. The opening "...and now they work for me. My name is Charlie" sequence was the most hilarious thing I've seen in a theater all year. It's worth seeing on the big screen-- eye candy works best when it's overwhelmingly big.

In a startlingly clueless op-ed piece, famously-overrated columnist Thomas Friedman discovers Google. And Wi-Fi! And globalism -- again! In the same column! It's all about the way these things affect the perceived size of the world. He describes Google as "the most popular search engine." Gee, thanks, Tom. Osama and I hadn't heard out here in our cave. Then he launches into an over-extended analogy comparing Google and God. He actually quotes someone as saying "God is wireless", and uses this as part of a syllogism that concludes, practically speaking, that Google is God. (More on that later.) The point of the article, Tom says, is to show that because of Google-via-Wifi, "the world is getting smaller".

He manages to observe this even though, he says, everyone else's feeling "that the world was shrinking from a size medium to a size small...feels over [since 9/11]." What is he thinking here? Nothing about a handful of guys from Saudi Arabia killing 3000 Americans in 2 hours made me think the world was getting any bigger. And his presumptions continue: "While you were sleeping since 9/11..." he audaciously begins a sentence. Who, precisely, has been sleeping since 9/11, in any sense of the word? Are Americans more or less aware of the world around them since then? I imagine that everyone is more aware and alert than any time since WWII, not just of threats but of the issues behind those threats.

So all this leads to his conclusion that networks connect people. Hmm. Good point, professor. It's funny that of all the kinds of networks to discuss -- social, political, economic, or technological -- he chooses Wifi, which doesn't permeate even a sizeable portion of NYC, let alone Afghanistan or Liberia. He says Google+Wi-Fi "means that what people think of us, as Americans, will matter more, not less." Sure, but (a) doesn't everyone already know this, especially since 9/11, and (b) is it really because of the internet that this matters? People become more aware of their hatred of us because they learn about us online? Access to more information = increased hatred? If this is so, why do so many countries -- Iran, China, etc -- do everything possible to cut off the networks? To illustrate his point, he quotes someone as saying that Osama videos, delivered via Wifi, will be effective propaganda tools. So I guess as soon as Osama gets that Wireless Access Point properly configured, we're all in for it. Tom, people don't need Wi-Fi to know the consequences of globalism, for better or for worse, nor do they need it to understand the effects of our foreign policy. The answers are in their air, water, and markets, not online.

This column reminds me of nothing so much as the time a few years ago when he said that guy who ran a mail-order bookstore out of his basement would vanquish Amazon. In both pieces, he somehow manages to simultaneously state the obvious and get it all wrong.

Finally, in case you don't actually read the column, here's the quote comparing Google and God, which is so ridiculous and terrible it sounds made up:

"And with wireless, it means I will be able to find anything, anywhere, anytime. Which is why I say that Google, combined with Wi-Fi, is a little bit like God. God is wireless, God is everywhere and God sees and knows everything. Throughout history, people connected to God without wires. Now, for many questions in the world, you ask Google, and increasingly, you can do it without wires, too."

Tom, please, for the love of Google, turn off the Tom Friedman Op-Ed Factory™ once in a while, and write something that makes sense.

The guy who runs the big-deal blog Scripting News is having a freak-out. He stopped publishing because he's not getting enough emotional support from people. Lighten up, buddy.

I guess there is something innately self-important about bloggers that makes them prone to this sort of break-down and subsequent screed. (QED: even us.)

Update: Phew, his tantrum is over now. Everyone can go about their business.

Apparently, this is what started the episode. Get a grip, dog. No one even knows what you people are arguing about. Meanwhile, the world burns.

Robot nurse. Has a tv screen for a face. [via robots.net]

Was Christian Brando involved in the killing of Robert Blake's wife? Right after she was killed, the story was that she wanted to marry Christian, but settled for Baretta.

The Guardian on the death of irony. [via slashdot, strangely]

NYT on Amy Sacco of Bungalow 8. Great picture of the Hilton squad accompanies the article.

CNN has a brief interview with Andrew Jarecki, director of Capturing the Friedmans. Tidbit: Jarecki, I learned from the director's commentary on my Charlie's Angels, pt 1 DVD, is the guy who plays Sam Rockwell's father in the photo of him and Charlie that Sam shows Drew.

The Charlie's Angels premiere was here the other night. For the benefit of people who follow celebrity t-shirt and slogan trends, I should point out that Drew Barrymore wore a t-shirt that read "My boyfriend is out of town." If she had checked her dysfunctional-celebrity-child-of-dysfunctional- celebrity-parent-big-event-wardrobe database, she would have learned that Kelly Osbourne wore the exact same shirt to the MTV Video Music Awards last year.

ps to future Googlers: we have no idea where to buy this shirt.

pps. While we're on the topic of fashion at the premiere, check out Demi's outfit, which is possibly the worst thing anyone has worn in public since Gwyneth's saggy tit dress a few celebrity years ago. "Hello, Mr. Blackwell? Yeah, hi, it's me...Demi. Put me down for '03. Say, what are you doin' later?"

Update: Here's a pic of Kelly in the shirt. It's yellow.

Earlier this month, a BBC radio newscaster suggested that Tony Blair embellished military reports to convince Parliament (and the public) to go to war with Iraq. Well, now Blair threatens sue the BBC.

In case you're not already frothy and panting for Charlie's Angels, here's an AP interview with the 3 stars about their wild and kooky celebrity lives, and how much they all admire poor, washed-up Demi Moore who sucks the fame right out of her boyfriends like a tick. Also: Cameron Diaz loves getting older.

First Sharon Stone, now James Spader. Get ready for a star-studded The Practice. I wonder who his secretary is going to be.

Washington Post on increasing numbers of girl DJs at clubs. DJ Snowsuit, where are you? -adm

From the article: "That obsession with music is what drives many women, like men, to step off the dance floor and into the DJ booth. They get sick of what they hear at the clubs. Or maybe they listen to their favorite song get wrecked in a bad mix. Then they stop dancing, head to the bar, order a drink and think: I know what he should have played . . . Being a DJ is ultimately about being in control."

Gulp. OK, who wants to buy me a set of decks? -amy

Widely blogged, but here you go: Scariest. Mugshot. Ever. [via bar]

Have you seen the ad campaign for Ann Coulter's new book, Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism?

OK, well the headline is "Ann Coulter on liberalism and other crimes
against America", and then goes on to say "In Treason, Coulter reveals exactly where liberals stand, and shows why they hate America." (tx Whiskas)

This just makes me want to marry Michael Moore and then move to Canada and never ever come back to our country, The Republican States of America, ever again. The Revolution has come! At last those America-hating liberals have been completely squelched!

I mean, it's the naked x-rays, the threatened war in Iran, Us Weekly's editor leaving, the lies, the lies, the lies, everything. That's it. We're moving to Canada.

Or marrying Amish girls.

First Stuff, now this. The editor of Us Weekly, one of our favorite magazines, has just left them for American Media, the company that publishes the National Enquirer and The Star, among others. She had taken a huge percentage of the tabloid readership and gotten them to switch to Us Weekly during her tenure. -amy

Bad idea, Bonnie. You were the darling of the publishing world, the hotshot who couldn't miss. People trembled and collapsed in your wake. Smart girls from Colby got your coffee every morning, hitching their wagon to your star. And now this? What gives? Is your goal to change the tabloid industry and make it respectable? Single-handedly? And thereby cement your legacy in the annals of journalism history, like Joseph Pulitzer in reverse? I'm not sure what you're up to, but good luck. But remember, if it doesn't work, I don't think the gatekeepers of Respectable Journalism are going to let you back in. -adm

NYT's Elvis Mitchell on Charlie's Angels: it's like eating Honeycombs doused in Red Bull. He can't seem to decide if he likes it, but he says it's better than the first one. McG, the director, seems as though he has Red Bull and Honeycombs for breakfast every morning, so this makes sense.

Ebert says, 2.5 stars. He didn't really like the first one either, remember, but he says he's more forgiving this time.

Bad news for Duane Dog Chapman, bounty hunter extraordinaire: he must stand trial in Mexico for using force to capture Andrew Luster, millionaire bad boy. Hang in there, Dog. We're in your corner. I thought the FBI would have sprung him by now.

E! reports on an altercation that may or may not have really happened between Paris Hilton and a bouncer outside an LA club recently.

The post-Soviet world is looking pretty Soviet these days: massive grain shortages are expected in Ukraine, and people have started hoarding flour.

Airport screeners see your boobies! But, that's the price of freedom.

At Neal Pollack's request, we bring you: Michael Savage is gay, gay, gay (tx Whiskas).

It's not a very good day for Mr. Savage: the Supreme Court struck down state bans of homosex. -amy

Here's the court's decision. Lurid details about what gay people do, and how horrifying it is to watch. [pdf] I'm no lawyer, but it looks like the law it struck down also prohibited certain heterosexual oral acts, too. Also, check out page 31 of the opinion for Scalia's "slippery slope" dissent. -adm

OK people. Today's theme is GOSSIP.

Who is Pam Anderson's first post-Kid boy-toy? Need you ask? Fred Durst.

Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz have announced that they will attend this year's Love Parade in Berlin, a Eurodance festival almost as old and tired as their relationship already is.

Could poor little Britney Spears be any more sad in her bids for attention? "I used drugs! No! No, really, and I drank too! I.... hey! And I'm not even a virgin!"

Rumors about the next Star Wars movie title. -amy

Strange how Fred Durst is becoming rock's leading consumer of sloppy seconds. First Britney, now Pamela. According to my celebrity sex spreadsheet, this puts him on track to be screwing Winona by the end of the year, who holds the all-time record for rock-star sloppy seconds. [see lower right of page.] I know it sounds strange, but it's science.

Also, so Britney decides to spill her guts about her Sodomite lifestyle to The Star? Why would a super-hot big-time star like Britney Spears tell all this to The STAR? They must have had her over a barrell about something. Maybe that she drinks, did drugs, and isn't a virgin. And the fact that she isn't a super-hot big-time star anymore. -adm

Snow Day
Blogger is upgrading everybody's blogs, so their system is down and we can't really update.

In the meantime, you can try to figure out who killed Jam Master Jay. This guy might have some answers.

Or you can read through our archives from a year ago. We were so young then!

Or you can learn more about us.

Update: Blogger is back up, so we'll be posting again soon.

There are reports that the beloved Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, has been arrested. Pentagon won't confirm.

More on Eminem today: wearing a surgical mask, he dangled a baby doll over a hotel balcony. Front page of the Post today.

Gene Simmons is reading from his book Sex Money Kiss at the downtown Borders tomorrow afternoon. Is there any title more perfectly suited to Gene than that?

New dimension to the Spike TV v. Spike Lee battle: Spike Jones, Jr., whose father wrote "Yes We Have No Bananas", has joined with TNN against Spike Lee, arguing that no one owns the name "Spike". -amy

There's an affidavit from Jones out there somewhere that we're trying to track down. In the meantime, here's the recent order denying a stay in the injunction [pdf]. In other words, Spike TV can't delay changing their name.

Also, a twist I'm not sure anyone has mentioned: Spike is sort of biting the hand that fed him on this one: Viacom, the owner of TNN/SpikeTV also owns MTV, which funded Kings of Comedy, which partially resuscitated Spike after Summer of Sam underwhelmed the box office and critics. (And then he followed up with Bamboozled.) -adm

Adult children of teachers at Phillips Exeter came back to Exeter, NH in the First Unofficial Faculty Brat Family Reunion. (NY Times) Interesting observation that Exeter is probably the most ethnically diverse town in NH because of the Academy. -amy

More on elite New England high schools: A satirical flier denouncing treatment of minorities at Boston Latin has been traced to a teacher. There's been tension at the school over who gets to teach AP classes but (as is always the case in Boston), it's just a symptom of the root problem of racism. Article contains the interesting statistic that just 3% of the 107,000 AP teachers nationally are minorities. -adm

NYC public schools are combating obesity more directly: more soy burgers in the cafeteria, no more devil dogs in the vending machines. (NY Times)

Salon finally has enough decent stuff up that it's worth sitting through the ads. Start with this great review of Justin & Kelly's terrible movie, which they say may be the worst movie ever made, but is still not worth seeing. Then there's this auto-biography of a skater girl, a requisite piece of Google backlash, and a piece on a new documentary about old driver training films. There's more, depending on your tastes.

Mugshot of Eminem's ex, Kim. [link fixed]

Collect the whole Mathers set!

Other celebrity crime news: Ashton Kutcher was apparently arrested for burglary while in college.

Ok, this is new information.

We set up a profile at Friendster for Amy's Robot. This means you can now use Friendster to meet other readers of Amy's Robot, and then have meaningless conversations or deep sex with them.

Please add yourself as a friend of ours. If the link above doesn't work, just search for us with the first name amy's and the last name robot. Also, Friendster is still in beta and seems pretty buggy sometimes, so be patient.

Update: We've received requests from several of you. We'll add you as soon as Friendster lets us.

If you're in Manhattan, you can go see Carolyn Parkhurst read from The Dogs of Babel, and learn to teach your dog to talk.

If you're in St. Louis or Hollywood, you can help give Nelly's sister a bone marrow transplant.

If you're going to Moscow, you can attend the Moscow Film Festival (which has some impressive guests and jury members) and see Gina Lollobrigida's exhibit at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, in which she returns to her first love: sculpture. (no mention of the exhibit on the Museum website.)

Following up an earlier thread: NY's education commissioner says local school districts can toss out the results of last week's Math Regents exam and use classwork to determine eligibility for graduation. There seems to be a logical flaw here: if the point of state-wide testing is to ensure that everyone gets an education of similar quality, how can you ensure this if you let everyone by on the basis of their classwork? Couldn't they administer another test? Couldn't they evaluate what an even lower "adjusted" passing grade on the test might be? (The passing grade on the test is already a 55.) At least they're making underclassmen take it again before they graduate.

NYT today:

• Boldface Names discusses the personal relationship between Tammy Faye Baker and Marilyn Manson. Are they the new Demi/Ashton?
• NYT: "Aspiring Spy Concocts Tale of Terrorist Plot". A young Pakistani in NYC told an elaborate tale of incipient terror to NYPD. Turned out, he made up the whole thing.
• Online, they've started a forum where people talk about their favorite New York books, fiction and non-fiction.

NYT: "Aspiring Spy Concocts Tale of Terrorist Plot". A young Pakistani in NYC told an elaborate tale of incipient terror to NYPD. Turned out, he made up the whole thing.

Spike Jonze's Ikea ad, "Lamp", won Ad of the Year at the international Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. The guys who made "The Cog", the Honda ad (which was also a nominee) must be pretty pissed.

(Reminder that the other two Ikea ads on the page were directed by Wes Anderson.)

More on ads: Slate's ad analyst takes a look at that branded streaker at the US Open last week. (The Fark thread he mentions is easy to find. In case you were wondering, Farkers identify her [via matching tattoos] as Britney/Brittany/Brittney Skye [imdb], a porn star who others call "a poor man's Jenna Jameson". Adult Video News confirms the ID.)

A little late maybe: Kutcher/Willis/Moore family photo.

Hey, what's the kid from Hanson doing in there? Is Demi banging him, too?

Apple: G5. Panther.

More on the Andrew Luster/Max Factor fugitive story we've been following: they reportedly found his diary. One major theme: "PAYBACK". Another theme: ingredients for margaritas. [squint at the pic]

This weekend, we went to see Capturing the Friedmans, the documentary about the Long Island teacher and his son who were charged with the sexual abuse of neighborhood kids in the late 1980s.

It is a difficult movie to watch. As the story unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that there are no completely trustworthy or even sympathetic characters in the film, and it lacks a moral center. The effect of this is wearying and slightly sickening, since the subject matter, in itself, is so disturbing. Each person in the film is a case study in neurosis: what happens when you conceal agonizing levels of desire and frustration? You eventually tear yourself and your family apart, apparently.

The film differs from other documentaries in that so much of the primary footage was shot by the subjects of the films themselves. The Friedmans, it is safe to say, were obsessed with documenting the most intimate aspects of their lives on video. Not just family dinners and happy moments, but family meetings, impromptu brawls, a brutal "video diary", and heartbreaking moments at crucial turning points in their lives. One of the family members admits that he can only remember certain things through seeing them on video -- he doesn't directly remember them happening. This is perhaps the only suggestion in the film that the family actually went back and watched their archival footage of their family destroying itself -- and yet, insistently and compulsively, they filmed everything. Why? Is it a sort of reverse logic that since happy people videotape happy moments, if you videotape a moment, it will be a happy one? Or did they inherit the obsession with watching from their father, who first gets into trouble because of his taste for illegal pornography?

Indeed, a large part of the film documents the son's sanctification of their father, and the latter half of the movie reveals a family in almost complete denial of its own nature. As things collapsed, only the mother seemed willing to admit what had happened, and she was ostracized by her sons as she "abandoned" their father. It's easier, apparently, to accuse your mother of abandoning your dad than it is to accept the possibility that your father is attracted to little boys.

Stylistically, the documentary has some problems. Interstitial shots of the Friedman's town seem unnecessary, inconsistent, and distract from the mood. I think they were intended to give the audience a chance to breathe, but they also seemed to make a silent commentary on the notion that things are not always as they seem in tight-knit communities. We know. Also, the narrative is at times choppy and poorly constructed: the transition of the case from an issue of pornograpy to abuse happens too quickly and without sufficient explanation, and the story of the case against the son seems to come out of nowhere. The Friedmans suffered from a lack of evidence contrary to the accusations against them, and the filmmakers, in a way, continue that predicament: out of the presumably dozens of students involved with the Friedmans, they only manage to track down one person who will say on camera that the charges were preposterous. One or two others suggest it off-camera. And yet the overall tone of the film is one of uncertainty: "Did they or didn't they?" it seems to constantly ask. Although they did not have a moral responsibility to do so, it seems the filmmakers could have found more people who, all these years later, would have recanted. Did they try? I don't know. Did they want to? If the goal of the film is depicting uncertainty, rather than uncovering the truth, it seems they might have made the right decision.

There are many other layers of the film that I haven't had a chance to discuss here: the effect of childhood trauma on your adult identity, the dynamics of a Jewish family in crisis, and the nature of sexuality. Overall, the film is disturbingly successful at documenting all of these, along with the destruction of a family and the long-term consequences for each family member.

So the SciFi channel is spending big bucks to get to the bottom of the UFO issue. They've even hired former Clintonite John Podesta to lobby Congress to de-classify documents related to it. This lengthy article details a new documentary SciFi is working on, but more interesting is the website of the Podesta-related Coalition for Freedom of Information, which is apparently dedicated to discovering and revealing evidence related to UFOs.

If you see one, by the way, make sure you report it, like everyone else.

For those outer-borough oriented readers, another talk with P. T. Anderson and Philip Seymour Hoffman got added for tonight at BAM, after the first one sold out.

People in Hong Kong spontaneously change into tight, shiny clothes and do the samba in celebration of the decline of SARS.

That luckiest of girls, Renee Zellweger, gets to keep all that extra weight on so she can film Piece of My Heart, a movie about Janis Joplin. In which she, Renee Zellweger, plays Janis Joplin. If you want to completely lose your mind, read this:

"Janis Joplin's life is a story that needs to be told, and there is no one better to portray her than Renee Zellweger," Paramount Pictures chair Sherry Lansing tells Variety. -amy

Maybe her brain will split into two sections and she'll have a complete freak-out and show up at the MTV Movie awards looking like Janis, a la her own ex-boyfriend, Jim Carrey, taking the Andy Kaufmann thing a little too far a few years ago. (JC video) -adm

"They're straight, hip, and moisturized." NYT explores the world of the "metrosexual" male.

Improvised robot dramas. Chatbots with different personality traits act out their own one-act plays.

It's no secret we have a thing for robot drama.

Boston Globe on life in an all-female band, in a special Cape Cod issue of the usually crappy, but slowly improving, Boston Globe Magazine. (Also in there is a short story by Mary Higgins Clark.)

Since they hated The Hulk, Salon offers an interview with Lou Ferrigno, for whom they feel nostaligia. [click through 1 million ads]

WP comes right out and says it: Bush over-stated the case for war. Probably the most comprehensive article on the topic so far.

NYT:

• Tim Weiner on the Duane Dog Chapman saga. His last words, pre-arrest: I've got him, honey, call the federales!
• Centennial of the other bridge, the Williamsburg bridge. W'burg hipsters: "Who cares. Who wants to go to Manhattan?"
• Yoga in the middle of Times Square: Passer-by: "I seen a lot of sexy girls. If you look good, you are living good. If you look bad, you are living bad. That is the story." Yogi: "Just stay in the silence. Stay in the silence." Somebody walked by and spit.
• Central Park is 150.
• The effect of transcranial magnetic stimulation on your brain and your ability to peform higher mental tasks. ''You could call this a creativity-amplifying machine. It's a way of altering our states of mind without taking drugs like mescaline. You can make people see the raw data of the world as it is. As it is actually represented in the unconscious mind of all of us.'' Crazy. Here's an early paper by the researchers that set them down this path.

Federal Reserve is now studying Behavioral Economics. They had a mini-conference on the topic a couple weeks ago in Cape Cod. They found interesting correlations between people who eat candy as soon as possible and whether they would rather have $3000 now or $3800 later.

Nicholas Kristof uncovers some more of the Jessica Lynch story in this long addendum to a column he wrote the other day. Looks like the "courageous lawyer who saved Jessica" story has been embellished, too. [via bar]

A friend writes:

So, everybody's all upset over the Regents exam in Math that was given to NY's high schoolers on Tuesday. Almost everybody failed. Parents and teachers are complaining the test was too difficult, but someone who was at the exam tells me that if the kids had studied the problems carefully and used critical-thinking skills, they probably would have been able to solve most of the problems. Instead, many of the kids glanced at a problem, figured they didn't know how to solve it, panicked, and moved on. The kids were pretty shell-shocked and dazed after the exam. Sample problem: A triangle has points A, B, and C. Use your compass and a straight edge to draw a median between Point A and Line BC. Another sample problem: "Chris has one less than double the number of CDs that Jerry has. Tom has 75% has many CDs as Chris. [etc, etc., etc.] How many CDs does [someone] have?" These kids (mostly sophomores), I'm told, were struggling to translate "one less than double" into an algebraic expression. Hmm. Sounds like there wasn't enough studying going on. Relatedly, teachers at one school had to distribute calculators to 50% of their students on the day of the exam. That says a lot about the mindset of the students coming into the exam. What kind of student doesn't bring a calculator to the math regents? Usually kids are looking for any advantage (besides studying) when they enter an exam. (Relatedly, the students who had calculators were using them to calculate things like "What is 275 x 10^-3?" If we let kids use calculators for this sort of thing, how can we be at all certain that they have any idea what the concept behind 10^-3 is?)

All of this is yet another symptom of declining educational standards in this country. Each year it seems we allow the complaints/laziness of our students to lower our expectations of them, and we demand less. Over the course of a generation or two, the end result is that the education the kids receive is a skeletal version of what kids were getting 20-30 years earlier. Improving education in this country has much less to do with annual testing, increases or decreases in funding, free laptops, or revolutionary classroom techniques than it does with the attitudes of the parents and schools. What's needed is the understanding, on a national level, that our kids are not getting the education that they need because we (teachers/administrators/government officials/parents) accept laziness as a fact of life and an excuse not to do work. Why is laziness accepted? Because it's too difficult to fight inertia.

The latest word is that the Education department is going to review the test to see if it was too hard. Will they again cave to the lowered expectations of teachers/parents/administrators?

Thanks to Roger Ebert, my not always reliable, but ultimately vindicated critical hero, for writing a review of Alex & Emma that points out all of the things that always drive me nuts in movies. I'm relieved to see that Ebert didn't fall for the heartwarming nature of the story, or the reasonably good casting, or Rob Reiner, and that he makes no apology for hating this movie.

But he mostly digs Hulk. And who knows, maybe we'll have some commentary for you later.

Interesting twist on the Max Factor-heir capture by tough bounty hunter case we've been following: the bounty hunger, "Dog" Chapman, was arrested by Mexican police, but so were the reality TV producer and actor with him during the capture. -amy

That photo Amy linked to of Dog is amazing -- what mise en scene! It looks like it came from a farcical beer commercial called "Mexican Jail". Was it staged? We'll see. -adm

And here's a photo of the actor Dog is in jail with. -amy

J. Lo disapproved of the proportions of her Madame Tussaud's wax figure, so they slimmed down her wax butt. OK, J. Lo? Your butt. It's big. Maybe she's never been in one of those dressing rooms with three mirrors. [tx adm]