Author: Daniel

Going to Movies as a Singleton

So early this morning I am going to go see Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice.

There are some movies that Ellen just does not want to see, mostly those based on comic books (though she is selective, she just generally avoids those that get terrible reviews and on reflection probably should avoid those with R ratings, to say she did like Deadpool hardly captures her reaction). While I, on the other hand, try to remain a ‘fanboy’, a term I am actually not entirely sure I understand the definition of, but that lack of understand is only increasing as I get older.

I reflect on the fact that there was a time I subscribed and read carefully Rolling Stone magazine. Now when we go to Washington Capitals games and they ask the crowd to text their choice of three songs to be played after the second period, not only do I rarely know anything about the songs, but I generally have never heard of the groups.

In any event, when Ellen does not come with me I tend to try and go early Sunday morning to see the non-Ellen movie, because that tends to conflict with less events we are doing. The other side benefit is that since Ellen gets dizzy when we go to an IMAX, 3D movie, when the movie in question should be watched in that format, like Batman v Superman, I get to see it in IMAX 3D. AND since the IMAX 3D movie theatre in Tysons has reserved seating, that is where I end up.

This time the movie theatre is going to be fairly crowded as us fanboys go even though the Rotten Tomatoes rating has dropped below 30%. But often I will go to the typically 9am or so start and I will end up being one of two or three people in the theatre.

Inevitably there is one guy who is pretty heavy, not that I am so thin, but he will almost be always be wearing shorts, even in winter, and have a large soda and a tub of popcorn. He sits in the front row. It is very important to me that I never become that person.

Let Them Eat Cereal

The other day Ellen told me a life lesson that a friend told her (and I know I am paraphrasing here, since my porous memory has become even more so).

Her friend said that a mother should know that if she waits long enough eventually everyone in the family will just eat cereal. Something I am embarrassed to admit has some resonance in our current empty nest existence. Though I hasten to add Ellen has become one of the truly remarkable chefs in my experience (I am, in this as in many ways, lucky), while I remain convinced that if I was supposed to cook on a regular basis God would not have caused microwaves to exist.

It occurred to me that there are many other aspects of our life that fit this pattern, though there are many responsibilities that end up being sort of assigned to one spousal member or the other. For example, trash being taken out to the trash cans in the garage and from there to the street is mostly mine.

Our biggest joint responsibility is emptying the dishwasher. We both wait to see if the sounds of the dishwasher elf occurs when we know the dishwasher is ‘clean’. One of the great everyday pleasures is hearing the sound of plates and glassware being put away and/or opening the dishwasher and finding it empty.

It is a comment on the continuing lack of gender equality (I am working on this) (really) that the dishwasher elf, at least in our house, is more likely to be a she and that when it is a he, the elf gets extra credit when in fact none is deserved. There is the additional challenge when I serve in that role, that there almost always is some odd-shaped bowl or plastic container that for the life of me I cannot figure out where it should go. Thus these are left on the shelf for expert analysis or put away in some creative destination. Ellen has noted that from time to time when she is looking for something that seems to be missing she is amazed at my creative shelving capabilities.

It is nice to know that even after 35 years I still retain some creative and unexpected capabilities.

Robot and Frank

I just finished my latest watching-while-walking-on-the-elliptical-walker movie, Robot and Frank.

It is a fairly short film, just shy of 1.5 hours that tells the story of an aging jewel thief, Frank Langella, who is given a healthcare robot to take care of him because of a failing memory and general inability to take care of himself.

Langella, as usual, gives a wonderful, warm, human performance. The interaction between Langella and the robot are touching, the story does not attempt to reach grand themes on the future of robotics as shown in films like Ex Machina. However, it does make some statements about growing old, something I am working on these days, a little bit of human-robotic interactions, which are becoming closer and closer to relevant, and is well acted with Susan Sarandon, Liv Tyler and James Marsden in the cast.

Nothing terrible profound but worth a look.

Who Knew

In the continuing series of my realizing that I am out of touch with, well, just about everything, Ellen informs me that Downton Abbey, whatever that is, is not about an Abbey.

Next she’ll probably tell me that the show Dawson’s Creek was not about a creek.

There seems to be nothing that I can hold onto in this confusing world we live in these days.

On C-SPAN at the Karl Rove Book Signing

If I had a bucket list, which I do not (I suppose creating a bucket list is my one current entry in my bucket list), and if being on C-SPAN was on that list, it has now been met.

Last year on December 12 we returned home from our entire family visit to Disneyworld and Ellen and my visit to her parents in Hilton Head. We had tickets to see Kiss Me Kate at the Shakespeare Theatre that evening, but also had received an invitation to a book signing by Karl Rove for his newly released book on William McKinley’s 1896 election, The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters.

I remember listening to Karl when we visited him in Austin in 1999 talking even then about the McKinley election and his hopes, not entirely realized, of using that as a model for a then only possible George W. Bush presidency. I had planned to buy the book anyway, so decided to drop by the book signing on the way to the theatre. For once there was an overlap between my political interests and background and Ellen’s book focus.

What Ellen and I did not know was that the entire event was being filmed for C-SPAN Books on TV (Ellen finds it funny when sometimes I listen to C-SPAN Books on TV on the radio which I guess integrates a fairly mixed media provisioning).

In any event, here is a link to the video. Ellen and I wander in around 7:14 for a minute. Then Ellen has a lengthy chat with Karl about his book starting at 11:45 or so, along with another long-time friend Bob Weed, I join again at 15:55. Karl signs my book starting at 19:58. We shortly had to leave unfortunately missing Karl’s discussion of the book and William McKinley’s political significance starting around 39:00.

I Think Not

For reasons I am not sure I can articulate I am on an email list from academia.edu (I guess because I play one these days at UMUC).
I received an email from them today generated I assume by some automated search engine saying they had found 90 papers that I may have written including one by “Daniel Mintz, George Kyriakides, Alexander Rabinovitch, Les Olson, et al” entitled:
 
“Long-Term Study of Vascularized Free-Draining Intraperitoneal Pancreatic Segmental Allografts in Beagle Dogs”.
 
The question asked was whether this actually was a paper I had written.
I am leaning toward “no”, though I am sure Beagle Dogs everywhere are thankful for the work that other Dan Mintz has done.

Comcast Is Not On My Favorite Companies List

I have two and a half goals when we have a major storm.

First, have power. Our neighborhood has buried power lines which means no trees to fall and break a connection in the neighborhood. However, eventually the lines go above ground outside the neighborhood and therein lies the problem. The neighborhood seems actually to connect in two separate places (I am sure I am describing this incorrectly). The result is that even when one part loses power generally the other one does.

In 2010, our half lost power, but we have some close friends (well, Ellen has close friends, as my daughters remind me I have no friends) in the other half, so we stayed with them for three days until power was restored.

This time, evidently PEPCO’s investments seem to have paid off. No power problems thus far at all.

Having said that, even in 2010, PEPCO would display on their web page which areas were out of power, how big the areas were, and give estimates of when they would at least arrive to fix each problem. Accepting that they were not always correct, sometimes physical circumstances make such predictions hard, it was at least something.

And that brings me to my second goal.

Second, keep the Internet. That also was going well until yesterday, Sunday morning, when Comcast went out. Comcast, now Monday morning is still out.

My problem with Comcast is that when you access their web page, when you send them the text message OUT, when you call their customer service representatives, they are able to tell you absolutely nothing of value. They confirm there is an outage (duh). The web page says, your area has an outage we are doing our best to fix it. How big is an area? Is there any estimates of any kind? It would seem to me that either Comcast has knowledge of at least the scope of the problem, in which case they should share it, or they do not have any knowledge of anything, in which case they need new management.

Grump.

Oh, my last half of a goal, I would at some point during the January/February timeframe like Montgomery County to plow the neighborhood streets. We have had our driveway shoveled out. In fact, it was dug two feet into the street, where it ends in a two-foot-high pile. It is not clear it makes sense to dig away the two-foot-high pile, since when the streets are finally plowed they will cover the end of our driveway again. Having said that, if we had both power and the internet while we are waiting for plows it would be a plus.

My Thoughts About Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens

If you have not seen the new Star Wars film and do want to know anything about its plot, do not read this post.

So a couple of weeks ago, Ellen and I went to see the new Star Wars movie. To be upfront about it, it was more of a check-the-box thing for me; something like seeing every movie based on a Marvel or DC Comics character.

When I saw the first Star Wars film, now Episode IV: A New Hope, with lines of people waiting to get in that wrapped around the block, I found it remarkable. It was so different than the kinds of films I was used to seeing and as a Star Trek fan and Science Fiction reader at the time, anything about space was fun to experience.

I also really enjoyed the second film,  now Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, which I found actually a bit complex and complicated in its plot. Though the big reveal that Darth Vader was Luke’s father could have been guessed at by the similarities between the name Vader and the German Vater which means father as pointed out by Beca in Pitch Perfect. By the way, did anyone like Pitch Perfect 2? A big disappointment.

The third film, now Episode VI: Return of the Jedi,  I found a total cop-out. Darth Vader went from being James Earl Jones, who had heft and weight as a sort-of disembodied voice and who went through a climatic choice between his life’s work, evil, and his son, picking his son (more on that later) only to become Sebastian Shaw when unmasked and as a spirit at the end of the film. The whole film with its teddy bear Ewoks and no one actually dying was a big disappointment.

I then, like the lemming I am, went through six years of watching three prequels, the less said of them the better. All had actual actors in them, as opposed to the original three which had perhaps two, Harrison Ford and Alec Guinness; none of the actors however acting. All three proving that George Lucas needed an editor (or perhaps a writer) to do his scripts. And remarkably also had Jar Jar Binks, the one character, other than Darth Vader who I really really wanted to die and disappear, kept coming back in film after film.

Star Trek at least tended to have a 50% batting average, every other film was pretty good. Star Wars through the first six films had barely a 33% positive result.

The interesting thing is that I never bought into the plot. While it was obvious that the Empire was bad (duh), it was much less obvious that the Jedi were good. I tend to being a populist, free market guy. The good guys in Star Wars were dependent on a hereditary based leadership with only a tiny group of people having ‘The Force’ which was needed to protect everyone else. Normally that would be the formula for the bad guys. And yes I understand my level of hypocrisy here, after all I really liked Frozen which sort of had the same approach though thankfully without Jar Jar Binks as a Senator.

The new director JJ Abrams had done a pretty good job of rebooting the Star Trek movies, I enjoyed both of the Star Trek films he was associated with so was interested in what the new film would be like, especially when it was clear that he was brought in to take the series in a new direction.

My take was that the special effects were fine and seeing the old characters was fun, like seeing Spock in the newer Star Trek films. Hmm, like seeing …

I have one overarching thought here. The original series took three films to show an arc illustrating a conflict between a father who was focused in one direction and a son who was focused in a different one. In the end the father was willing to sacrifice himself in service to the son’s journey. It was supplemented by lots of alien characters and a few fights between fighters in space (green squadron, red squadron, …).  And the big overpowering and seemingly impervious weapon of the Empire, the Death Star, had just one tiny little itty-bitty weakness (bad engineering I guess) which if the good guys could just attack that one spot would blow the overwhelming impervious Empire’s weapon up.

Thank goodness the new Star Wars film, Episode VII, had nothing going on that was similar to that.