@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
06/11/04 -- Vol. 22, No. 50
Table of Contents
Now the New York Times is Copying the VOID (comments by Mark R. Leeper):
Shortly after we ran our discussion of pizza, on June 9, the New
York Times ran an article on standardization of pizza. It is
"For the Pizza Makers of Naples, a Tempest in a Pie Dish" by Al
Baker. It can be found for a limited time at
(This article is certified to be about pizza. My article, that
is. The one in the New York Times I cannot vouch for.) [-mrl]
The Times They Are A-Changing (comments by Mark R. Leeper):
I see AT&T has a new advertising campaign that focuses on--believe
it or not--the ampersand in their name. No longer do they try to
sell themselves on the power and the inventive record of Bell
Laboratories.Nobel Prizes just don't mean what they used to.
Discovering how the Universe came into existence just lacks the
kind of pizzazz that sells today. Today what sells is the "&" in
their name.
The idea they say is that it is you *and* AT&T or some such. They
have taken something unusual in their name and accentuated it. I
mean how many telecom companies these days offer you a name with a
really funny conjunction? How many give you a name that you are
not sure how to type into Google? There is only one that I know.
That's AT&T!
There is an old rule in advertising. It says, "sell the sizzle
and not the steak." In fact, there is even a chain of steak
restaurants called "Sizzler". No customer at Sizzler ever hears
his or her steak sizzle. That happens in the kitchen. But
Sizzler offers you a steak that did sizzle. And it sizzled
recently too. What you are buying is not the sizzle, it is the
steak, but if the name can distract the buyer with a sensual image
that the customer can imagine, much of the selling is done.
I remember hearing an ad for a car dealer that said that in the
weekend sale they would be writing deals "with a sharp pencil."
People who come to the sale will not be thinking about the price
of the car; they will be looking for that sharp pencil point
scratching the paper. That image was probably worth real money to
the car dealership. And the salesman doesn't have to do anything
different. Who is going to ask his salesman, "Uh, the deal is
okay, but could you sharpen your pencil, please?"
Didn't there used be a pen that was advertised with "the pen that
closes with a click?" Does that click really mean that much? It
does to the pen company's accountant. Then there is the "simple
purple pill." There is something inside of us that says forget
the side effects, I don't care if after I take this pill I start
growing a second nose out of my shoulder. I want to take a pill
that is regal purple. I want to take any pill the color of grape
juice.
Now I am picturing the hard-nosed businessmen and engineers who
put together American Telephone and Telegraph and the phone
network, then abbreviated the name to AT&T. What kind of morons
would they think 21st century people are that they would let
themselves be fixated on the ampersand in their abbreviation?
That ampersand would become a big selling point? That is the 21st
century we built.
And I hear things are getting nearly as bad inside the telecom
industry.
The most popular comic strip in the telecom industry when I worked
there was Dilbert. Dilbert is to hi-tech business what Beetle
Bailey is to army life. The problem with the comic strip Dilbert
is that the 21st century has gotten so weird that it has no
future. No future.
I noted several years ago that my organization had reached the
point of "Dilbert Envy" where the policies of my organization
seemed more oppressive and callous toward employees than those of
Dilbert's fictional organization. Instead of a satire on how bad
it is to work in some of these companies, working with Dilbert
actually started to sound good. Well, perhaps not good, but far
preferable to what was happening in the real world.
These days Dilbert seems to be a success story. Dilbert has his
own cubicle! He has been in the same job for more than a decade
now. He is even in a stable enough situation to be working for
the same supervisor, albeit pointy-haired, for that whole decade.
Nobody works for the same person that long any more. In the real
world some crazy reorganization would have come along and Dilbert
would be working for someone new and probably worse. No, strike
that. By this point Dilbert would have been downsized. Nobody is
as lucky as Dilbert these days.
People who have been laid off or are just holding onto their jobs
by their fingernails are starting to look at Dilbert and hate his
guts. They ask, "What the hell does Dilbert have that I haven't
got?" Please people, be reminded that Dilbert is just a fictional
character. There may not be people so lucky in the real world.
You might want to fix on a more believable hero who is not quite
so dependent on pure luck. Try James Bond. Oh, and if you work
in the telecom industry and you want to have Dilbert's luck,
change you name. Spell it with an "&." [-mrl]
Letter of Comment on Pizza (from Peter Rubinstein):
You can't fool me. This week's "pizza" editorial is really about
Bourbon! There are strict laws governing just what a Bourbon must
be to be labeled as such. At least 51 percent of the grain used in
making the whiskey must be corn. Bourbon must be aged for a
minimum of two years in new, white oak barrels that have been
charred. Fermentation will take three to four days, depending on
the temperature at which you keep the mash. Nothing can be added
at bottling to enhance flavor, add sweetness or alter color.
Kentucky is the only state allowed to put the name Bourbon on the
bottle. [-pr]
[But who enforces these laws? It can't be Kentucky. -ecl]
HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (film review by Mark R. Leeper):
CAPSULE: Harry Potter is back at Hogwarts and this year he has a
crack at the man who betrayed and murdered his parents. And the
killer will have a crack at Harry. All the survivors of previous
film are back, but the tone is darker. A new director, Alfonso
Cuaron, takes the series in some different directions. Along for
the fun are two werewolves, shrunken heads, a hippogriff, and an
army of horrible phantom guardians. This is a family film, not a
children's film. The adults may like it as much as any of the
children in the audience. But the series is reaching a point of
diminishing returns. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
Are you bored in art museums? Ask the guard if they have a
painting called "The Temptation of St. Anthony." I don't know
much about St. Anthony or what tempted him but any artist who has
every tried to paint his temptation created a weird and wonderful
painting. They always have strange creatures who are fit to go
bump in the night, no matter who the artist is. It is just like
the fact that there is a different director doing Harry Potter
films. We now have Alfonso Cuaron, the director of Y TU MAMA
TAMBIEN, holding the reins. His vision for Hogwarts School of
Witchcraft and Wizardry may be a little darker and more menacing
than that of Chris Columbus's chapters, but it is no less fun.
Harry (played as usual by Daniel Radcliff) is back living with his
muggle guardians and practicing his magic in secret. He is still
treated like the Cinderella or Cosette of the family and is
insulted by a rude dinner guest, against whom he takes a gassy
revenge. Then in anger and frustration he runs away from home to
return to Hogwarts. It takes a special magical cover up to make
it possible for him ever to go home again. But things may be
worse at Hogwarts. Sirius Black, a friend of Harry's dead parents
who had betrayed and murdered them, has escaped from confinement
at Azkaban Prison. Now protecting the school are the banshee-like
Dementors who suck out the soul of the evil people they catch.
Cuaron chooses a style that is darker than the previous two films.
The style change (and some of the new symbolism) seems to be much
like that made between STAR WARS and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.
There is a bit less of the frivolous sort of jokes--talking hats,
nearly headless ghosts, etc.--that punctuated the previous films
as throwaways. There is much less in this film that is not
central to the story. But still the plot progresses slowly and
much of what Harry is able to do he does by having been given just
the right magical aid or by just happening to be in the right
place at the right time. Things were always a little contrived to
make things work out well for Potter.
The script has a hard time deciding if Harry is an internationally
famous wizard-to-be of great expectations or if he is the poor
orphaned waif that the other boys like Draco Malfoy pick on. The
two personas seem incompatible. If the story is slow to develop
at least it gives us the usual Harry Potter toys like talking
portraits on the walls and stairways that wander around. Some of
these features are starting to figure in the plot rather than
being temporary distractions. And we have to spend the first hour
collecting clues. Why does every year at Hogwarts unfold as a
detective mystery? Can't we have a good horror story or comedy
once in a while?
I think the Harry Potter series will continue until every notable
British actor has had a chance to show up at Hogwarts and perhaps
teach a course or at least cast a spell. The late Richard Harris
is not back, of course, so now the estimable Michael Gambon is
Dumbledore. Maggie Smith is back as the fussy Professor Minerva
McGonagall. Alan Rickman is the series's continuing red herring,
Professor Severus Snape. I have to admit he is a personal
favorite because he looks so sneerfully villainous and he always
turns out to be one of the good guys. Disney seems to always have
the bad guys repulsive or exaggeratedly manly and the good guys
are usually either attractive or at least sympathetically drawn
like Quasimodo. This year additions to the cast include David
Thewlis, Emma Thompson, Timothy Spall, and Gary Oldman. Oldman
has the other title role and once again blends so well into a role
that he is nearly unrecognizable. (I got to the end of THE
CONTENDER and asked, "So where was Gary Oldman?" This time I
recognized him eventually, but my wife did not.) John Cleese was
not present as his usual Nearly Headless Nick. It is just as
well. He never fits into the plot and just seems to be plastered
on as an afterthought.
The three main characters are not aging really well. Daniel
Radcliff was charming as a young Harry Potter when he was cast
something like three or four years ago. Now he is a teen with
rather ordinary looks and no obvious acting talent. Soon he won't
really resemble the character on the cover of the book. That may
be a problem for the series. Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley is
supposed to be nobody special in the story and so the demands on
him to be magnetic are far less. Of the three central characters
only Emma Watson as Hermione Granger seems to have real growth
potential as an actor. Radcliff and Watson might come out of this
series with career prospects like Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford
respectively.
HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN is no worse than its
predecessors, but there just is not enough that is new and
original. If this were the first Harry Potter film it would rate
considerably higher. But there is too much uniformity from one
film to the next. It is another mystery set in the same
environment, seen from another viewpoint, Cuaron's, but not enough
different to make it absorbing. I rate this film a +1 on the -4
to +4 scale or 6/10. [-mrl]
This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
I found myself reading some alternate histories from Britain
recently. Murray Davies's COLLABORATOR (Macmillan, ISBN
0-333-90844-9, #16.99) is a fine work in what seemed to have been an
overly-mined area: what if the Germans won in World War II? This,
admittedly, isn't quite that sweeping--it is focused on what might
have happened if a German invasion of England succeeded. It is a
very British look--much more downbeat than most American authors
would write, and not relying on the Yanks rushing in to save the
day. Instead, it looks at the reactions of a variety of
Britishers to an invasion and occupation, as well as the possible
progression of actions by the Germans during such an occupation.
It reminds me of Kevin Brownlow's IT HAPPENED HERE and other
well-written, low-key speculations. I can only hope that some American
publisher will decide to pick it up in spite of all the "flaws" I
mentioned.
The stories in the anthology PRIME MINISTER PORTILLO AND OTHER
THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED edited by Duncan Brack and Iain Dale
(Politico's, ISBN 1-84275-069-0, #16.99), on the other hand, are
almost all about speculations in British politics of the sort that
hardly anyone in the United States will follow them. (One is
about economic goings-on in the 1970s and led me to observe that
had it been about American economics of that time period, it still
would have been mostly incomprehensible to me.) They may be
well-written, but I can't tell. They are even more incomprehensible
than the more obscure episodes of "The Goon Show" or "I'm Sorry,
I'll Read That Again".
Jasper Fforde's THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS (ISBN 0-670-03289-1) is
another British alternate history, but completely understandable.
Well, understandable if you know some basic English literature.
The alternate history aspect of the Crimean War et al that was
more evident in the first book (THE EYRE AFFAIR) and had been
somewhat diminished in the second (LOST IN A GOOD BOOK), has
almost entirely vanished here. Instead the Prose Portal and its
ramifications have become the center--and a fine center it is.
I'm not sure the puns come quite as fast and furious as in the
first two books, but I certainly recommend this one. Caveat: read
the other two first. [-ecl]
Go to my home page
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Quote of the Week:
The more things a man is ashamed of,
the more respectable he is.
-- George Bernard Shaw