October 28 The paint-by-numbers movie Riding in Cars with Boys puts the "ick" in chick flick. In it, we watch the melodramatically unlucky and perennially blameless female lead  age from 15 to 36.  Alas, it's told in real time.    October 25 A good writing night. I'm now 9 pages into the third act, the guts of which are already written in my notes. Yep, I'm feelin' fine right now.   If there's a better, more gasp-inducing last scene in a movie than the very last shot in The Godfather, I've never seen it. It's miraculously beautiful, and it's still on my mind three days after my fourth viewing.    October 21 It was released a few months before I started this page, so I suppose that first of all, I should say that the Phantom Menace was a tremendous disappointment to me. As it was to a lot of people. I shan't pick nits about a nearly three-year-old movie; suffice it to say that it's a disjointed, unengaging mediocrity.  That makes all the more impressive the following superlative: The Phantom Menace is the best DVD release I've ever seen. Same movie, yeah, but oh my God, the features. Audio and video calibration. Director's commentary. Trailers, commercials, posters, tone poems. Deleted scenes with special effects finished just for this DVD. 12 Web documentaries, five featurettes, and the single finest making-of documentary you'll ever see. The latter is shot unobtrusively, like "Cops," with no narrative, no interviews, just cameras on the set, in the editing booth, in the screening room, at the budget meetings, at the casting auditions, etc. It's simply astounding in its detail, and it shames the commercials masquerading as educational material that "behind the scenes" films usually amount to. Most interesting to me, though, were the animatics, where you can view a scene's storyboards, crude animatics, and final version simultaneously and see the evolution of the action. I've watched more than five hours of the DVD this weekend, and I haven't so much as glanced at the movie; it's truly the least interesting thing there. There's so much well-produced content, so slickly delivered, that I truly wonder how Lucasfilm made any money off this DVD.    October 17 I fucking hate Microsoft. For variety, today I hate them as a customer. As an insider, I know how much masturbatory lip-service they give to "delighting the customer." And as their customer, I'm painfully feeling the opposite of delight. Witness this sequence of events:       1. I install a search mechanism on a Web site and try a search. I get the error "Ass-wipe, you must install Extra Special Thing A for this to work." (Total time elapsed: 10 minutes) 2. I run Setup for Extra Special Thing A, but I soon get the message "Pencil-dick, you must first install Extra Special Thing B." (Total time elapsed: 20 minutes) 3. I go to the install point for Extra Special Thing B, and it tells me "Numb-nuts, you must first upgrade your browser to Extra Special Thing C 5.5 or above." (Total time elapsed: 22 minutes) 4. I upgrade to Extra Special Thing C 5.5. (Total time elapsed: 65 minutes) 5. I find out that the install procedure for Extra Special Thing B has changed and that I didn't need to do #4. (Total time elapsed: 70 minutes) 6. I install Extra Special Thing B. (Total time elapsed: 100 minutes) 7. I install Extra Special Thing A (Total time elapsed: 135 minutes) 8. I try my search again. It responds: "Ass-wipe, you must install Extra Special Thing A for this to work." (Total time elapsed: 140 minutes) October 16 Is anyone else amused that the hijackers--rigidly pious men with one foot in heaven, men who presumed to speak and kill for God--spent so much of their time in this country getting lap-dances from the stripper Des-10-E at Cheetah's?   October 14 Laundromats. God God, I forgot how much I hate them. I wonder how much a double-load washing machine costs?   October 12 Gray weather sucks.   Binny baby repeatedly boasts that "America is filled with fear." Well, he should certainly know. From his ideal vantage point, he's got his finger on the pulse of America like few others. But if his analysis is to be believed, I'm wondering why he's hiding in a cave and my friends and I are trying to reconcile a Vegas trip with World Series dates. Oh, the horror, the horror....   October 11 Bin Laden and his Taliban lapdogs are kinda hilarious. Not to make light of the situation--not at all. I'm speaking not of their deeds but only of their amateurish attempts at manipulating the media and their flailing, pouty, prepubescent appeals to their fellow sixth graders in the world community.  Some day when I'm back in the classroom, I'm going to use their rhetorical approach and logical constructs a models of incompetence. Let's borrow from Harbrace's list of logical fallacies, so I can illustrate: Harbrace's Logical Fallacies Bin Laden and Taliban Bombast Ad hominum—attacking the person who presents an issue, rather than dealing logically with the issue itself "America is thirsty for more bloodshed in Afghanistan." ..."the head of the infidels, Bush." Bandwagon—an argument saying "Everyone's doing or saying or thinking something, so you should too." "America, think: why does the whole world hate you?" Generalization—a claim based on hasty or biased evidence "This is America, God has sent one of the attacks by God and has attacked one of its best buildings. And this is America filled with fear from the north to south and east to west, thank God. " False analogy—the assumption that because things are like in some ways, they must be alike in other ways "People -- event of the world -- in Japan, hundreds of thousands of people got killed. This is not a war crime. Or in Iraq, what our -- who are being killed in Iraq. This is not a crime. And those, when they were attacked in my Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam, Afghanistan, and Sudan were attacked. " [Editor's note: ironically, this statement follows him saying that "Thanks to God, he who God guides will never lose." But, um, isn't this a list of losses, Binny?"] False cause—the assumption that because one event follows another, the first is the cause of the second." "America is reaping what it has sown in its crimes against the Palestinian and Iraqi peoples." False dilemma—stating that only two alternatives exist when in fact there are more than two "There are only true Muslims and nonbelievers, and nonbelievers must be destroyed." Guilt by association—an attempt to make someone responsible for the beliefs or actions of others "The American Zionists are paying for the sins of Israel." Non sequitur—a statement that does not follow logically from what has just been said "I was not responsible for the attacks" (bin Laden, before U.S. retaliation) "The plague of planes raining on America will never stop!" (bin Laden, after) Red herring—dodging the real issue by drawing attention to an irrelevant issue "America will never dream nor those who live in America will never taste security and safety unless we feel security and safety in our land and in Palestine." Slippery slope—the assumption that if one thing is allowed, it will only be the first step in a downward spiral "This is not about bin Laden. This is about the destruction of all Islam." I'd like to add an honorable mention all my own. For sheer, clueless stupidity, I don't think this Taliban claim can be beaten. They combine old reliable—mischaracterizing what your opponent said—with a leap of logic all their own. United States: "We have achieved air supremacy, meaning that we can fly over Afghanistan whenever we want."   Taliban: "The American claims that they have destroyed all of our country's defense are untrue. bin Laden is still alive and the armies of Islam are intact. As for the air defenses, they are intact too—the American planes are just flying higher than our weapons can reach." And comedians in this country were wondering whether it was appropriate to be funny? These guys are totally cutting up, and they've got cluster bombs detonating over their heads.   October 10 The promised anecdote lies below. You don't need to be a football fan to appreciate the moment I enjoyed; just imagine it was Justin Timberlake, Susan Sarandon, Emeril, or whoever most irritates you in this world. Some of you have long heard my bitching about a Steelers quarterback named Mike Tomzcak, but for the rest of you: the man used to throw a lot of touchdown passes...to the other team. He was already playing at Ohio State when I was a freshman, and while he had moments of sheer brilliance, he also had a knack for asinine mistakes, such as 1) getting the university sanctioned because he glamour-modeled clothing for a local department store and, most notoriously, 2) in the fourth quarter with 23 seconds left against the best team in the conference, with the game in the balance, he blithely threw the ball out of bounds to stop the clock--on fourth down. Game over. I wanted to throttle him then, but he graduated before I got my chance. He went to the pros, and I went to Spokane. Then, after nine years, he was suddenly back in my life, this time as a Steeler. I couldn't believe my poor luck. And on he went, again causing my team to lose in ways both uncreative (putting so much arc on passes to the sideline that opposing players had to stop and wait underneath them prior to intercepting and scoring) and incredibly creative (fumbling the snap on the go-ahead field goal in Jacksonville, which was returned for a touchdown). When the Steelers finally cut my arch-nemesis last year, I wasn't thrilled; I was exhausted. But Tomzcak was gone from my life, and that was the end of that. But no. That was not the end. After the Steelers game last Sunday, I decided to watch the 4pm game in a restaurant near my motel, a pizza place that we've frequented on Football Weekend. I walked in the door, stopped cold, and shrieked. There, in the corner, staring at me, sat Mike Tomzcak. In retirement, he's one half of the "Mike and Mike" sports-talk show, and Sunday they chose to broadcast where I chose to be. I sat there and stewed for a few hours, eating my pizza, watching the game, and remembering the depths of my persecution at his hands. Finally, I decided to go back to my hotel. First, though, a quick stop in the men's room; I bulled through the door and WHAM! I clobbered Tomzcak in the ass! I hit him so hard he smacked the wall. His radio partner was at the urinal, and Mike was standing with this back to the door, talking to him, when I got the supreme satisfaction of smacking his ass hard. I apologized, he left, and that was that. But no. That was not that. His partner remained and joked with me about how I'd "gone around the tackle and blindsided Tomzcak." I replied it had been a long time and coming and had, in fact, been pleasurable restitution for me. He asked me what I meant, so I laid it all out for him. He left. I soon followed, got into my car, and sped away. "Hmm," I thought. "I wonder if he'll mention the incident on the air." So I tuned in their station just in time to hear the following exchange: Partner: "Well, we've got Jerome Bettis standing by to talk about his achievement today of rushing for 10,000 yards in his career, but first, I want to talk about something that just occurred right here. We were in the men's room just now, when some guy came in and just CREAMED Mike with the door, I mean really nailed him good. I was joking about how he blindsided Mike from the weak side, and all was well and good. But then you left, Mike. I mean, at first I gave him the benefit of the doubt and thought it was an accident, but when you left he said some things that make me not too sure. He says it was your comeuppance, that you've persecuted him his whole life.  He's still angry about the way you tried the stop the clock on fourth down by throwing it out of bounds against Iowa." Tomzcak (flustered): "It was Purdue. If he's gonna call me out on that, he should at least get his facts straight." Partner: "Well, that wasn't all. Not by a long shot. He's still pissed at the sanctions slapped on Ohio State because you modeled for a magazine. He spoke with great irritation about your alleged "innumerable hanging out-passes returned for touchdowns." And apparently, he and a friend flew all the way from Seattle to Jacksonville four years ago to watch you fumble away that snap on the game-winning field goal, the one that was returned instead for a game-winning touchdown. I'm tellin' ya, Mike, I've got your back here, but you'd better be careful around this guy!" Tomzcak (nervously): "Where is he, anyway?" Laughing himself to tears in his rental car, that's where. So that's my tale. I not only got to physically smack my longtime persecutor in the ass, I got to humiliate him on the air. I can die now. My life's work is done. What can anyone do for an encore after this, really?   October 9 Me back. I used my home-town, Columbus, as a hub, and in between the Ohio State game on Saturday, the Pittsburgh game on Sunday, and my return to Columbus for my flight home yesterday, I recorded these observations: TWA can kiss my sweaty fat ass. I had to disembark Friday morning's flight—their first flight of the day, mind you—when they suddenly discovered a hydraulics problem. Three hours of "please do not leave the gate area" later, they cancelled the flight altogether. Yes, I had to disembark the replacement flight for the flight I had to disembark on September 11. (It's at this point that every woman I've ever dated is thinking, "My God, I'm glad I wasn't there to hear him go off.") I managed to get to St. Louis somehow, but then my connecting flight to Columbus was delayed 90 minutes so that they could fix a navigational system. "Just follow I-70!" I screamed toward the cockpit, to no avail. I finally arrived in Columbus some 14 hours after checking in at Sea-Tac. I had plenty of time to calculate the inefficiency of my day's folly: in transporting me across country, TWA averaged a mere 142 mph. Damn, just gimme a Porche and I can do that myself. In the nine years that I've been in Washington, not much about Columbus has changed. Exceptions: the bastards who bought my childhood house not only cut down the trees I planted as a child, but they tore up my mother's garden and replaced it with an aluminum shed; Columbus now has soccer and hockey teams and shiny new stadiums--who knew?; Ohio State's campus is almost unfamiliar to me, there are so many new buildings. My dad once foretold that I'd get lost on campus in my dotage. What once seemed laughable now seems plausible.   It's now unusual for me to be places where I have childhood, or even distant adult, memories. I suppose this is logical enough, but it's nothing I anticipated. I was moved by the mere presence of history. When I left Columbus, I was disgusted by its congestion and population density. Reflecting upon this nine years later, as I sailed across the freeways and found parking with no difficulty, I had a good laugh. Previously, I'd looked at my life in three segments: Columbus, Spokane, and Seattle. But now as I drove around Columbus, I realized just how many lives I'd lived there, each largely disconnected from the other. I wonder if Seattle will one day seem like many different lives to me. I really miss autumn. The pot roast dinner at Cookers is not as wonderful as I remember it being; my childhood house is not as imposing; and the stairs leading up to the front door of my elementary school, which I remembered as rising infinitely to the heavens like the stairs outside Congress, actually number five. My 11-year old graffiti at Ohio State is intact, I'm happy to report. Thanks to the English department's refusal to ever remove posters and flyers, I was shocked to find a long-forgotten, extremely snotty, highly visible remark I made on a poster that still hangs right by the department entrance. Cost of renting a car in Columbus for four days, with unlimited mileage: $69 Cost of parking my car for four days, off-airport at Doug Fox Travel in Seattle: $61 Did you know some rental cars come with neither tape deck nor CD player? I didn't. I don't much care for the Steelers' new stadium. It's ugly, too quiet, and the seats are smaller (and with less legroom) than in the coach section of my flights home. The Steelers game was the second "first game in Heinz Field," replacing the canceled game that I tried to fly to last month but that didn't take place because of the WTC attacks. How ironic, then, that our country's counterattack started while I was in my seat Sunday. I watched in quiet awe as they showed Bush's speech on the jumbotron, live at halftime. I have a great anecdote to tell, but it'll have to wait, 'cause I have to get to work.  October 4 Friends, strangers, deranged stalkers--I bid you adieu until I return from my long weekend back East.     October 3 It might not look major to you, but this section has undergone a major refit today. Let me know if you encounter problems.   October 2 Much discussion at the office today about how I'm the first person everyone knows to get back on a plane since the attacks. It's not like they're accusing me of patriotism or bravery, mind you; they just want to know how stringent airport security is. My idea of not taking any luggage on my trip, and instead buying my sundries and some clean clothes in Pittsburgh, has not met with enthusiasm. Everyone seems to think that's innately suspicious behavior--"Look at me! I won't need luggage when I join Allah and my 100 virgins in heaven!"-- to the point where I'm pretty much asking to be anally probed. I think not. See this space for the answer, I guess.   October 1 [Quickly checking Jen's page to see if a precedent for not rolling over for October has been set. Eh, close enough.]   Not one to let a little thing like terrorists keep me from opening my team's new stadium, I'm strapping myself into a plane this weekend and heading for Pittsburgh. Note that this represents the fifth ticket to the home opener that I've purchased. Sigh. But at a certain point, it becomes about winning, and I'll be damned if some band of group-unthinking, unhygenic sociopaths is gonna change my plans.