Best Show Ever.

Why, oh why, has nobody told me about "Pimp My Ride"?

Probably because it's on MTV, and everyone I know stopped watching that crap 15 years ago.

But I'll be damned if "Pimp" isn't the most entertaining half hour of television I've seen in a loooong time. I've filled up our TiVo the past couple nights snagging new episodes. Where else are you going to hear lines like, "I feel priveleged to have had my car pimped", spoken in all sincerity and without a trace of irony?

The premise is pretty unique. MTV viewers send in descriptions of their crappy cars, the more hopeless the better. The host, rapper Xzibit, then surprises them at their homes and drives their beaters away to an L.A. custom shop. Xzibit is impishly entertaining and clearly relishes his role as an automotive Kris Kringle. For many of the people featured, this is like winning the lottery. The customizations have to cost at least $20,000 each.

Once the car is at the shop, the staffers discuss what to do with it. A car always get a centerpiece customization based on the chief interest or hobby of the owner. A student of Italian gets her panel truck tricked out with Italian marble, velvet and a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel. A stressed-out student gets a custom recliner set between two waterfalls. A music buff gets a 22", 360-lb woofer in place of a rear seat, etc.

Sure, the show has its flaws. They don't delve much into the engine modifications, though it's clear that many of the cars drive so poorly they had to have gotten new motors. There is a lot of attention paid to rims, upholstery and paint jobs, though admittedly these all tend to be pretty stunning.

At half an hour, it's also too short to get many details on the pimping process. You usually see a time-elapse tear-down of the car, followed by quick run-throughs of how they did the paint, wheels, interior and electronics. The shop guys are seriously good, and I could easily sit through an hour of how they solved specific challenges.

The shows end with the owners being led into the shop (after weeks, months? They never spell out how long it takes to do these mods) to see their new rides and get the low-down on all the bells and whistles. They are often followed home to get the reactions of their insanely jealous friends and family.

It's hard to imagine that a 1986 Buick Century, 1994 Mitsubishi Galant, or a 1988 Dodge Caravan (complete with genuine fake wood paneling) could be cool, but these guys actually accomplish that.

Last night, after watching like 6 episodes in a row, I dreamed that my 1969 Ford Galaxie was getting pimped. I swear I've never been more disappointed to wake up.

Including that Jessica Alba dream that ruined a perfectly good set of sheets.

Drum War

This is one of the best videos I have ever seen on YouTube. It's three old dudes pounding the crap out of their drum sets. I think the guy on the left is noted jazz drummer Pete York. Not sure who the other two are, but they rock. It's long, but worth every second. Watch, and be amazed.

"Art"

I started two weeks of vacation today, so the Oriental Wife and I decided to get us some culture by heading to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

I am having a hard time deciding which was my favorite piece. Was it Fountain, a brilliant bisexual statement that shifted the foundation art from the silly and outmoded standard of aesthetic appreciation to the loftier plane of intellectual intent?

Or maybe it was Erased de Kooning, in which Robert Rauschenberg convinced abstract master Willem de Kooning to give him a pencil drawing, which the clever Rauschenberg promptly erased and claimed as his own masterpiece?

There were several pieces whose sheer genius overwhelmed me in the moment and left me unable to recall their titles.

There was the video of two homosexual satyrs in a bare room, engaged in some mysterious sado-masochistic romp.

There was the sheet of billowing blue cloth suspended over an ordinary electric fan.

There was the piece consisting of three canvases, all painted white, whose creative energy was surpassed only by the single canvas painted pitch black. I suppose one piece might have been called Day and the other Night, though your guess is as good as mine as to which was which.

There was the sheet of gray smudges, apparently made by repeatedly bouncing an ink-dipped basketball on the surface. The canvas was propped on a pile of bricks.

One piece, doubtless a subtle commentary on the commodification of sexual identity in post-industrial capitalist sociey, consisted of smears left by nude women rolling around in blue paint.

Oh sure, here and there there were sleepy nods to bygone trends such as the passe obsession with technique and skill.

Thankfully, only about 30 percent of the museum was dedicated to such quaint pieces, presumably kept there as a lesson to future artists about the conceptual shackles arising as a result of conforming to sunbordinated modes of thought left behind as relics of a defunct socio-economic structure.

Definitely a $25 well spent!

Best. Story. Ever.

Head on over to Daddy-O, where Middleman takes a brief break from posting about impending fatherhood to write about one hell of a story involving kidnapping, murder, a police standoff and... well, I don't want to spoil it. Just go read it already.

Gaming: Good or Bad?

An article by Christina Rosen about the negative effects of videogames has been making the rounds in the blogosphere, and coming away rather worse for the wear.

As an avid gamer (well, as avid as I can be working a full-time job with a 1-hour commute each way, plus a 5-year-old boy to make things interesting) I grapple regularly with how much gaming is enough.

For instance, I have put in about 45 hours just playing "Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" on my Xbox 360. I am raising a virtual puppy on my Nintendo DS Lite, and raising an entire society in "Civilization IV".

How many books could I have read in that time? How many blog posts could I have put up? Should my energies be better devoted to creative writing, or perhaps reviving the pencil sketching I was passionate about as a boy?

I believe there is a place for gaming. It can provide an essential time-out from other, more taxing activities. Play time is an important part of mental health.

The most distasteful part of Ms. Rosen's piece is her ad hominem attacks on Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good For You, a book that argues that popular culture isn't the big mental vacuum the mainstream media makes it out to be.

Ms. Rosen's ugly remarks about Mr. Johnson's intelligence do nothing to advance her own arguments and do not belong in a serious treatment of the issues she discusses. I guess she has loosed similar personal barbs at Glenn Reynolds, so maybe this is an unfortunate trait of her writing.

But despite that, I don't think her arguments can be dismissed out of hand. Anyone else have thoughts?

Can We Get Serious?

(I updated the second paragraph after J-Dogg pointed out that the first quote was actually from an administration official defending the program, not an unnamed official as I'd asserted. Sorry.)

Is it just me, or does The New York Times actually want America to be defeated? This pumped-up story on the administration tracking financial records has to be the worst example of "gotcha" war journalism the Times has dreamed up yet.

After exposing a secret program that everyone knew was already a reality in concept (we said right after 9/11 we'd be going after terrorist finances, a fact the report acknowledges), they try to pass themselves off as objective by admitting that the program actually has a lot of safeguards, and quoting an administration official who defends it. But they quickly cast the program in a scary light, with the second quote being from an "unnamed intelligence official" who informs us ominously that "the potential for abuse is enormous".

Seriously, this is just offensive. This is the same paper that cited national security to call for a special investigator to look into who "leaked" the name of Valerie Plame, despite the fact that she hadn't been covert for nearly 6 years and also tried to manipulate a diplomatic process by nominating her husband for the job. Now the same paper exposes details of an operation that is being used to catch, you know, actual terrorists? Nice to know that the unelected New York Times editors are now in charge of national security.

Seriously, what is wrong with these people? These are also same folk who have urged the U.S. to employ more legal and police-style tactics rather than brute military force to fight terrorism. Here is a perfect example of those kind of non-military tactics being used responsibly and effectively, and the Times goes and lobs an tactical nuke at the operation.

Administration officials, however, asked The New York Times not to publish this article, saying that disclosure of the Swift program could jeopardize its effectiveness. They also enlisted several current and former officials, both Democrat and Republican, to vouch for its value.

Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, said: "We have listened closely to the administration's arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. We remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

Seriously? They just don't get it.

A Ton of Laughs

USA Today ran an opinion piece the other day called "Why Fat Jokes Aren't Funny". This is a serious topic about discrimination, so lets sober up for a sec and take a look:

Our wedding had gone surprisingly well. In spite of my incessant worries about how my dress would make me look and what other people would think of me, the day went off without a hitch. Our honeymoon, too, was simple but fun.

Throughout most of it, I was able to forget that I was morbidly obese...

Not to be insensitive, but two paragraphs in, and I'm already squirting my Slim Fast shake out my nose.

"...until we got home and we were suddenly confronted with an unexpected obstacle. Traditionally, the husband is supposed to carry the bride into the house, but this was very unlikely, since I was twice as large as my husband.

I'm sorry, but was this piece meant for The Onion? Who starts a piece ostensibly about how it's not cool to make fun of fat people, and then proceed to describe a situation that sounds like it came straight out of "Shallow Hal"?

"Thin actors are only too willing to don fat suits to get cheap laughs. The movies Shallow Hal and The Nutty Professor, while not entirely anti-fat, largely consisted of two-hour-long fat jokes."

Did she see the same movies I did? Both of those movies had fat jokes, yes, but it was always the jerks telling them. In one, the superficial player realizes a hot body isn't everything and falls in love with a fat girl. In the other, an overweight man overcomes his insecurities and scores the hot chick. The movies aren't "anti-fat" in any way, their entire message is about accepting people for who they are.

Since fatness is seen as a lifestyle choice rather than a genetic condition, many people tell themselves that it is OK to laugh at the overweight. In spite of the extreme difficulty obese people face when trying to lose weight (I have lost more than 60 pounds three times), our condition is assumed to be self-inflicted.

I'm sure there are often genetic and glandular reasons behind some obesity cases. But in other cases, the fat person is simply unwilling to admit they have a willpower problem. I had a friend in college who was probably double what she should have weighed. She took a handful of pills everyday to help her deal with a "glandular" problem. One day I dropped by her dorm room and happened to see that space between the bed and wall was stuffed with empty 2-liter Coke and Sprite bottles. She drank one or two of those a day.

Also, I'm not sure what her point is about losing 60 lbs three times. I've lost 10 lbs several times and can't keep it off, but I recognize that's because I decide to have that extra piece of pizza, or crack open a microbrew, or skip that morning run. I haven't had the willpower to maintain the appropriate balance of calories and exercise.

I certainly agree that some of the abuse this woman has enountered seems pretty outrageous. Ranting in front of an obese friend about how you dislike fat people is
just boneheaded and rude. But claiming that being fat is an inevitable condition that precludes any kind of joke or criticism is equally wrongheaded.

Especially if you start your defense by telling a fat joke.

How Do You Say "Randroid" In Chinese?

(I changed the title of this post because I thought this one was funnier)

Ayn Rand was one of the most influential thinkers in my life. Now, when you read that, you had one of three reactions. You respectfully nodded your head, you rolled your eyes, or you went "Ann who?"

Seriously, there was nothing like living in Communist China to make one receptive to arguments for the moral underpinnings of capitalism. But if you want a sign of how much China has changed over the past 15 years, check this out: a Chinese publishing house has done the first translation of The Fountainhead and is selling it via Amazon.com's subsidiary, Joyo.com.

I ordered a copy and am reading it with the Oriental Wife, who has heard me spout about Rand off and on for 12 years but has never had easy access to her material. Now I'll read a page in English and she'll read a page in Chinese. The translation is pretty good, and reading just the first two chapters sparked an hour-long discussion between us.

Anyone else out there read Rand or have an opinion they want to share?

Champs!

Huh. I guess someone won the NBA championships. I seriously didn't know about this until Wednesday afternoon. Probably it's because I care about the NBA finals even less than I care about the World Cup, if that's possible.

Summer Fun

Well, I think I know what I'm doing for summer vacation: the annual swingers convention in Las Vegas.

Hey, quit laughing, this is serious stuff. There is a whole host of informative seminars, such as:

--Inside a Threesome
--Practicing Safe Cyber-sex (given by Buck Bloombecker, head of the National Center for Computer Crime Data)
--Lady's Squirt-shop Workshop
--Becoming a Polyorgasmic Couple

And, my favorite:

--Polyamory: Having Your Kate & Edith Too

If those fall flat, it should at least be interesting to hear The Mayor discuss his experiences on the Bisexuality Panel.

Reviews

I've been meaning to review a bunch of books, movies, CDs and games lately but just haven't gotten around to it. I seem to be reading, playing or watching too much to bother with blogging these days. Here they are, in no particular order:

"The Village" (DVD). This M. Night Shyamalan flick got widely panned when it came, with virtually everyone saying they could see the twist coming a mile away. Roger Ebert gave it a one star, an utterly unjustifiable ranking. I guess I'm in the minority because I was actually surprised by the ending and thought the premise was intriguing. Moreover, the acting was phenomenal, especially Adrian Brody, who simply was that village idiot. I haven't seen a more disturbingly believable halfwit portrayal since Billy Bob Thorton in "A Simple Plan". The movie's not perfect, but people are just wrong for saying that the premise is "unbelievable". This is a guy whose previous three movies were about a kid who sees ghosts, a guy who discovers he's a superhero, and an alien invasion. It's called "suspension of disbelief", and it will serve you well when watching "The Village".

"Both Sides of the Gun" (CD). This is arguably Ben Harper's best album since 1997's "Will to Live". The double-disc has one set of lush acoustic numbers, and one set of electric-driven songs ranging from blaxsploitation-style funk to slide guitar blues. Highights are "Cryin' Won't Help You", the hand-clapping "Get It Like You Like It" and the grinding slide epic "Serve Your Soul".
"The Raconteurs" (CD). Talk about catchy. Rock n' roll savior Jack White is back, and he brought some friends. White and his fellow Detroit rockers shine in this perfect little pop album. "Hands", "Broken Boy Soldiers" and "Yellow Sun" are among the standouts, showing influences from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin. My only complaint is that with only 10 tracks of about 3 minutes each, the album is over waaay too soon.

"Guests of the Ayatollah" (Book). Mark Bowden made his mark with "Black Hawk Down", a meticulous reconstruction of the events surrounding the downing of a U.S. helicopter in Somalia. For the past five years, he has been researching and writing this book about the Iranian revolution and the ordeal suffered by dozens of American hostages for 444 days. Packed with scrupulous detail about the shocked Americans, their often bumbling captors, and the diplomatic back-and-forth that went on behind the scenes, "Guests" looks set to become the definitive work on the incident. A must-read for anyone who is interested in Iranian-American relations today.

Customer Dis-service

What the hell is up with customer service these days? I'm not talking about established headaches like the cable or power companies. Those guys have actually vastly simplified my life by moving a lot of support online.

No, I'm talking about things as basic as McDonald's. We stopped at Mickey Dee's last weekend on the way up to camping. I ordered three breakfast meals. Pretty basic stuff. Yet the staff managed to fuck up three times on one order.

First, the cashier entered one item incorrectly, which I didn't discover until our order came up. Then, she punched in the wrong amount of cash I gave her so the till told her she owed me $1,000.15. I was cool with that, but she insisted on getting her manager. Then, when our order was ready, they called out the wrong number so my food sat there rapidly cooling while they tried to figure out why nobody was picking it up.

I have also lost complete faith in the dude at my local GameStop. This boner has given me incorrect information several times and basically proven that he knows less about games and the industry than I do. The final straw was when I went to return my Nintendo DS Lite because of a dead pixel. I read in some online forums that Target and EB were happily taking back machines with bum pixels, but this guy said GameStop wouldn't do that and I would have to call Nintendo directly. Now, maybe Gamestop does have a no-return policy on that stuff, but I find that hard to believe since they own EB, which was apparently doing exchanges. So it makes me think this guy was just being lazy.

Then, I go into Target to find a game that the GameSpot loser told me no longer existed. They had several copies, of course. But when I went to get a carrying case for the DS Lite, they had zero accessories. This is mind-boggling. the DS Lite is the hottest and most highly anticipated piece of gaming hardware since the Xbox 360 was released last November. The idea that Target wouldn't stock a robust selection of accessories -- from cases to new styluses to screen protectors -- not only shows a complete ignorance of the market but also leaves money on the table. I ended up getting my case at a Virgin Megastore, which had lots of accessories but hardly any games.

Perhaps not surprisingly, my best customer service experience came with Nintendo today when I called them to ask about exchanging the DS. They immediately set me up with a replacement DS, saying they will first ship it to me and when I get it, I put the current one in the box and send it back. So I don't even lose any playing time. The whole thing took about 5 mintues from the time I picked up the phone.

That's customer service.

Blame the Victim

Would you expect to see a story about identity theft written like this?

WASHINGTON - Online banking customers have donated $1.4 billion to other Web users, getting hoodwinked to pay for fancy cars, jewelry and tropical vacations, investigators have found.

Of course not. The story would rightly read:

WASHINGTON - Identity thieves have stolen $1.4 billion from online banking customers and used the money to buy fancy cars, jewelry and tropical vacations, investigators have found.

But that's just the angle being taken in this story about the GAO finding people have scammed government hurricane relief funds.

WASHINGTON - The government doled out as much as $1.4 billion in bogus assistance to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, getting hoodwinked to pay for season football tickets, a tropical vacation and even a divorce lawyer, congressional investigators have found.

Yeah, blame the victim! The real story is this:

WASHINGTON - Criminals taking advantage of hurricanes Katrina and Rita have hoodwinked the government out of $1.4 billion in bogus assistance, using the money to pay for football tickets, tropical vacations and even a divorce lawyer, congressional investigators have found.

I'm jus' sayin' is all.

Game Is Toy

You know what this is?

Further evidence, if any was needed, that I am a loser, dork and a 13-year-old boy mentally and emotionally.

Not necessarily in that order.

It also happens to be a hell of a lot of fun.

Camping

I'm taking Number One Son and Oriental Wife camping tomorrow. It'll be our second trip since we moved back to the States. The Bay Area has tons of camping sites, but there are a couple of drawbacks. Many of them are 3-4 hours away. And the ones that are in state parks can be reserved online -- meaning they can fill up months in advance, at least for many weekends. The solution is to go during the week, or to break for one of the national forests, which are first-come, first-serve.

Last time we camped out on the coast, up by Sonoma County State Beach. That's a photo to the right. This time, we're heading east, to Stanislaus National Forest. There's a campground there that is built on an old Indian village by a river, and you can still see things like grinding stones and whatnot scattered about.

See y'all Sunday night.

Defeated

It turns out that Zarqawi initially survived the bombing and, though badly wounded, tried to crawl away when he saw that U.S. troops had come for him. He then died with complete awareness that he had lost.

Awesome.

Sweet Dreams

A nice way to end the day, if true. Hopefully we'll know more in the morning.

And we'll see if the confirmed death of a man who bore responsibility for intentionally killing countless numbers of Iraqi men, women and children manages to eclipse, even temporarily, the media-fed speculative frenzy about the conduct of the U.S. military and what may or may not have happened in Haditha.

Arrogant

Typical. Gen. Michael Hagee, the head of the Marine Corps refuses to resign in disgrace over this whole Haditha thing. This obviously underscores the perception of American military leaders and arrogant and unaccountable. I mean, look at this:

"We want to ensure the investigations are complete with respect to what actually happened on the ground, and actions taken or not taken by the chain of command," Hagee said.

How dare this man think himself above the court of media opinion! I mean, questions have been raised and these reports could further undermine support for the war. Clearly, this is no time to try to figure out the actual facts.

Parks

Check out what Californians look for when they want to get away from it all. Click on this state parks link and look at the top searches.

No. 4 is "state parks with wi-fi".

If I ever see someone checking their e-mail at a campground, I'm going to string him up from the nearest redwood.

Sweet Rides

I spent the day down in Silicon Valley. It's not exactly a pleasant place -- lots of business parks connected by long stretches of wiiiiide highway. It's often hotter than San Francisco and the East Bay, and it's definitely more polluted.

But one of the things I like about driving down there is you can usually count on seeing a lot of sweet cars. I spent the day at a well-known microchip company, and saw a Maserati Quattroporte, Ferrari Maranello, Lotus Elise, Acura NSX, new Corvette C6, a 1969 (I think) Mustang Mach 1, and, my favorite, a cherry red 1967 Mustang Shelby GT 350.

Suh-weet.

Grainy photos follow.

Sweet.

Sweeter.

Sweetest.