Writers, writer's blogs and some other stuff

Lee Goldberg in his blog A Writer's Life semi-mocks the latest batch of who do they think they're kidding misguided parents in The Lit Nazis. Goldberg, a novelist and TV series writer, whose blog happened to fall on the same page at A9 as mine, has a terrific blogroll from which I extracted the following:

• Franklin Avenue, from an editor at Variety
• James Wolcott
• SF novelist Laurel K. Hamilton's LKH Blog
• Bob Greenberger
• Peter David, author of many Star Trek and other novels
• Piers Anthony's Newsletter, not quite a blog but as wordy as you'd expect from this author
• Sarah Weinman's Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind
• TVgasm, the name says enough by it's own self
• Zach Braff's Garden State Blog

Finally, from The New York Review of Books, 'I Is Someone Else' is a lengthy essay on Dylan's recent autobiography and related literature which I'm too tired to start with this late. Poor me.

Slow but steady: I'm only a few dollars away from another Google AdSense check.

Donovan chats about life in the Bundesliga: good questions from Sports Illustrated writer Grant Wahl on how our boy is doing in his first weeks on the Continent.

CD Review: Michael Buble: It's Time. But not really. I mean, I saw this kid on Las Vegas a few months back and so what if his debut album sold three million copies, Daniel Sterdan's review is spot on without even hearing one track just for the bull's eye quip about producer "soulless svengali David Foster." Lennie Kravitz, whose Stand By Your Woman, is covered here, is certainly happy in the pocketbook but miserable in his soul if he had to listen to this version even once. Taste is subjective but damn, this is not possibly worth the cost of a blank CD to burn a copy dowloaded off a torrent!

Prestige gasoline

Gas prices are getting out of whack again, earlier this year than has been the case, but Shell must think they got some serious shizznit in their V-Power high test blend. Usually a gallon of regular costs some base amount, $X.xx9, with the middle grade 10 cents higher and the top an additional ten cents per gallon. The nine-tenths of a cent is a marketing hangover that's supposed to trick us into believing the price is lower than it is but since every single gas station does it the practice is stupid (though I bet people inside the industry know the reason it hasn't gone away).

Back to Shell and V-Power, which is formulated to clean your engine while you drive. I pulled up at a stop light this morning and one of the stations was on my right; out of habit I checked their prices. Regular was $2.019, higher than two weeks ago though in line for the area, but the mid-grade blend was $2.199 and high test $2.499. Very strange.

Then I thought about the method in their apparent madness. Sneaky, very cynical but props for thinking of it. Most cars today do not require us to spend extra for higher than 87 octane gas; the few that do are almost exclusively expensive sports cars like Porsches and Ferraris. So if someone's willing to pay the cost of those cars they probably don't care about a few cents a gallon on gas and Shell will not piss off the majority of customers with a higher price for 91 octane.

The cynical aspect of this strategy is that some people, either arrogant, ignorant or both, believe that more expensive means better and so buy the top grade gas. Even though it's a waste of money that does nothing for their car I guess it boosts their ego and their willing to pay a premium for that.

Emotional journalism and illiegal immigration

(This might as well have been a Letter to the Editor but since they never publish mine...)

The New York Times, in Nina Bernstein's article Caught Between Parents and the Law, looks at National Fugitive Operations Program and seems barely able to keep the bile from spewing out. NFOP, a growing program in the Department of Homeland Security, is tasked with enforcing deportation orders on foreign nationals who refuse to voluntarily obey them. Bernstein's piece focuses on one family, the Thakurs originally from Bangladesh. The father is in America legally but the mother was ordered to leave in 1997 (though appeals kept on through 2003) and she was detained by one the agency's teams last fall and put on a plane home.

The article's hook is that the couple's two children (two and ten years old) were sent with the mother to her homeland but due to a paperwork snafu arrived in Bangladesh ten days before her with no adults to receive or care for them. The kids could have stayed in America--both are American citizens as they were born on US soil--but the father chose to send them since he didn't feel capable of caring for them. I am not in any way suggesting this isn't a sad situation which may potentially cause significant emotional harm to the Thakur children and family.

Contrary to the Times' posturing, this is not our fault. Did the mother stay in the United States illegally, after having applied for legal residency and being denied, including a lengthy appeals process? Yes, and Mrs. Thakur does not dispute this. In a perfect, or slightly better, world the deportation arrangements would have been smoother but sadly we do not live in such a world and the federal government agents were not responsible for the children; if anything the kids should have stayed in New York an extra week or two, surely Dad could have managed them for 10 days, to allow Mom to arrive in Bangladesh and make living arrangements.

But, as I often repeat, there are people who benefit by promoting the interests of people in America illegally. So Ms. Bernstein devotes most of her limited print space to putting a human face on the issue through this family's story, along with quotes from "an immigration lawyer with the Legal Aid Society" and "a law student and a recent intern with American Friends Service Committee, a charitable and advocacy group that has addressed the issue of immigrant detainees." Only an unenthusiastic defense from a DHS official presents the other perspective and less than a sentence from the director of a group which favors restricting immigration. The author apparently could not find a single other person deported through this program to tell us about. Particularly not a person who meets the main criteria for the program's targets, sexual predators and drug dealers.

Poor journalism, especially from a publication which prides itself on rising above charges of liberal media.

"The Power of the Blogosphere" my ass. The Charlie Rose Show had on Glenn Reynolds, Anna Marie Cox, Andrew Sullivan and Joe Trippi last night for a conversation about blogging and I was soooooooooo bored I deleted it off TiVo before the discussion was half over. All four of these people, while well-known, are all about the politics. How could they not have on someone like Dave Winer (okay not my favorite person but still...), Matt Haughey (plus MetaFilter), or even, yes I'll go there, Scoble. The show would even have been better if they'd just left one or two of the guests off, they were all talking on top of each other and Rose couldn't control things.

Chinese military posture

Interesting change in the CIA's depiction of the Chinese military capability [via Garret]. Fits together with a chart I tore out of the Mercury News last week which shows national quantities of nuclear weapons superimposed on a world map; I was saving it to use in a post but really haven't had the correct hook. The bit that got my attention were the numbers for China, 300 strategic and 120 tactical, which are probably correct as far as is known outside their top military and political leadership but seem awfully low to me. Since the graphic was attached to stories about the recent North Korean announcements of their possession of such weapons, the other nations' numbers weren't discussed. But do any of you really believe that China, having had nukes for 40 years or so, really have so few weapons?

New Springsteen in April!

Yes! New Bruce is coming April 26, a 12 song collection titled Devils & Dust that will be followed by a small venue tour. The songs are more in the generally folk/acoustic vein of The Ghost of Tom Joad and Nebraska and were recorded without the E Street Band; Springsteen played most of the instruments with help on bass from producer Brendan O'Brien (who also worked with Bruce on The Rising) and drumming by Steve Jordan. Suh-weet!

I just ran into this too: QDN: Whose side is your banker on?. Interesting explanation.

Bob Lutz of GM makes another first in the blogging world by publishing the first formal availability announcement of a new autombile in a blog: The Promise of Solstice. Looks like a potential success for Pontiac if the car delivers in terms of quality, as the stats are very good. A sporty convertible with a sticker under $20k (barely, but including destination charge), 177 HP, 18-inch wheels, glass rear window and a CD player.

Racing to the bottom

Are you living in California? Did you receive a letter last week from a company called ChoicePoint? If you did, I hope you paid attention and didn't toss it as just another piece of junk mail. MSNBC reports in Database giant gives access to fake firms that more than 30,000 people in this state may be identity theft victims after some smart asses posing as a real company bought personal dossiers from ChoicePoint. Of course the company is hardly saying anything, nor is it taking any responsibility, hiding for months behind the skirts of an "ongoing law enforcement investigation" excuse.

Quick Online Tips That Work: Absolutely Del.icio.us - Complete Tool Collection, for further exploration.

Tom Brown's Munger's Wisdoms is a nice overview of Charlie Munger and his investing and operational framework. Munger is Warren Buffett's partner in Berkshire Hathaway and a person whose thinking should not be taken lightly.

Read today's Tim Goodman column on Arrested Development for an inside view of how twisted network TV programming decision making can really be.

Letter to the Editor: Immigrant advocates criticize jail policy

The Mercury News had another misguided article on illegal immigrants Saturday, Immigrant advocates criticize jail policy by Jessie Mangaliman, which reported on some recent agreements between several county jails (most recently LA County, the first one in California) and the Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I was unhappy with the article's posture and wrote in the following (unpublished) letter:

Margaret Zaknoen and Renee Saucedo are advocating for a cause which they support, and any good fighter will use the strongest possible language, but I find their rhetoric seriously wrong ("Immigrant advocates criticize jail policy", 2/12/05). Local police forces properly work with federal agencies every day and there is no good reason why immigration laws should be exempt from such cooperation. Nor is this situation a step towards requiring hospitals or schools to report residency status, as Saucedo exaggerates, because this screening is directly connected to the primary mission of our law enforcement agencies. One can appreciate the reluctance of other illegal immigrants to cooperate with police in most circumstances but that's hardly a reason to compound a big problem by allowing convicted criminals to remain in the United States needlessly.

Reasonable people may campaign for changes in American immigration law or for programs which reduce the incentives that drive people here illegally; however, that's an entirely different discussion.

Further, we have more than enough homegrown criminals straining California jails and prisons today without covering the cost for people who've shown contempt for our society twice over. Would Zaknoen, Saucedo and members of their organizations prefer to spend already scarce tax dollars on the cost of imprisoning convicted criminals and--given the apparent political impossibility of raising taxes--cut education or healthcare spending instead?

Definitely one of the stranger Firefox extensions I've seen is Abe Vigoda Status. This handy little add-on checks a website which reports on whether this retired actor is, well, dead or alive. As of this moment he's alive.

Bushinations: Openings for Democrats?

William Greider has long been one of my favorite muckraking writers and in his new article for The Nation, The New Colossus, he packs a wallop straight at the jaws of CEOs and investment bankers who think that changes forced on them in the wake of Enron and WorldCom are heading for the past. Instead, their new troubles are coming from an entirely new direction: state officials and union bosses who control massive retirement funds and aren't afraid to use them.

From a different angle, Friedman's latest (No Mullah Left Behind) offers a lever that meshes well with the action Greider discusses. Where does the money go when Americans fill up their cars, SUVs and pickup trucks? Among other places to the governments in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, which they tend to turn around and use against us. Decreasing our profligate consumption of petroleum would decrease their income and their ability to fund groups antithetical to our interests.

But are President Bush and his crew in DC working to strengthen our national security by developing meaningful alternative fuel source? No, because that would also take money out of the oil industry and that's where Bush has his strongest backing and where many of his political appointees spent their careers. Can't bite the hand that feeds him, can he?

Democrats can. If Howard Dean can use his new party chairmanship to push the policies developed by California State Treasurer Phil Angelides, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and others (this is from Greider's piece) as one pincer and a well-thought out New Manhattan Project to develop new energy resources as the other, the Democratic Party may just nip this Radical Right neotheocracy in the bud.

Dammit, the classic 1965 French docudrama The Battle of Algiers is on IFC right now but not again within the two weeks of listings TiVo has in memory. Makes me wonder, additionally, why the system has no Add to Wishlist choice on the program detail screen. I need to check OnDemand later and see if the movie's available through the service.

Today's movie: Win a Date with Tad Hamilton

I didn't protest too much when TS1 brought this DVD home from the library. Looked harmlessly cute and offered two young actors that I think will be big stars in the near future in Topher Grace and Josh Duhamel. Kate Bosworth is an upcoming starlet--she'll play Lois Lane in next year's Superman Returns--though she has stiff age group competition from the likes of Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Scarlett Johannson and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Win a Date with Tad Hamilton is a worlds colliding triangular romantic comedy, a basic but robust framework. Duhamel plays Hamilton, a hunky Hollywood star in danger of ruining his career with fast living, Bosworth is small town fan Rosalee, and Grace her supermarket boss and good friend Pete. Tad's agent and manager (both characters named Richard Levy, played by Nathan Lane and Sean Hayes) cook up the title contest, which Rosalee of course wins. During a sweet dinner date in Hollywood (fish out of water opportunity!), she opens his eyes to the emptiness of his life and so Tad flies to West Virginia to find out more. However, Pete is finally about to profess his love in the lunchroom when Hamilton arrives. Hijinks ensue!

Written by Victor Levin (Mad About You) and directed by Robert Luketic (both Legally Blonde movies and, opening in May, the J.Lo-Jane Fonda comedy Monster-in-Law), this movie works because of good writing, good pacing and editing plus a very strong performance by Topher Grace. Win a Date could easily have lost it's way by leaning on cliches, a trap many younger target demo comedies fall to, or by wasting screen time on secondary plot lines. Instead Levin and Luketic use small portions of both as seasoning; for instance, Angelica, the hot bartender (Kathryn Hahn) who adores Pete the way Pete does Rosalee and Rosalee does Tad, might have tempted other filmmakers to add a scene or two but I saw nothing of the sort even in the deleted extras included on the DVD.

Props to Gary Cole for adding to his string of oddball supporting characters as Bosworth's Dad; perhaps at 48 he passed his window of opportunity for big lead roles when Crusade crashed and burned but has done terrific work as Ron Livingston's boss in cult fave Office Space, Mike Brady in the recent Brady Bunch flicks, and the sheriff in short-lived TV series American Gothic. Sean Hayes is hot and building off his crazy Jack from Will & Grace but a bit miscast here, trying too hard to be "straight." Josh Duhamel is decent as Tad, showing he can play more than just the smartass pretty boy that's his character on Las Vegas.

And yes girls, in case you were wondering, the fabulous Tad does have his own website!

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