I have a day job. So every word of this is my opinion, not that of my employer. This offer IS void in Wisconsin. Except, of course, that some material in this column comes from incoming e-mail; such material is usually reproduced in the Sans Serif type font to distinguish it from the (somewhat) original material.

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Tales of Teaching 2004
Tales of Teaching 2005

General News

• Paul and Stephanie Visit
• Why Teachers Are Different
• Rae Re-Ranked
• Carroll Cat Column

Computer Industry News

• Craig Reynolds' Technobriefs
• Cool HTML Trick

Web Site of the Week

• Daniel Dern: Great 404 Message

Humor

• The Top 15 Plots Rejected by Movie Studios
• The Top 13 Signs Your Motivational Speaker Is Depressed (Part I)

Movies

• Spy Kids II
• A Question For You

Letters

• Link-o-Rama: Dan Grobstein, Daniel Dern

General News

Paul and Stephanie Visit

My niece and nephew, Stephanie and Paul, swung into town for a brief visit this weekend from their respective homes. It was a pleasure and a delight to have them. Stephanie is about the same age as my older daughter Marlow; Paul, the only male in his generation of cousins, is two years younger than my younger daughter Rae.

Friday night, Rae and Paul went to a Guster concert in Berkeley; Stephanie arrived late by plane. Saturday, we all trolled Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, where they got their Birthday presents (they were born on the same day in September, five years apart). We ate lunch at the Cafe Intermezzo, the home of the salad too large to eat, accompanied by the bread to large to fit in your mouth. Marlow first discovered it. It is a fine establishment. We then went to the Marin Civic Center, for what we thought would be a dollhouse FURNITURE show. Turned out to be a DOLL SHOW with almost no furniture. Still, the Civic Center in San Rafael (designed by Frank Lloyd Wright) is an impressive pile, so we at least got to see some cool architecture. Since we were in the neighborhood, we swung by Muir Woods.

You know when the exact peak of the tourist season is? Saturday, August 17 at 3pm. The closest parking space to Muir Woods was more than five miles away, and there are no shuttle buses. So we went to Pier 39, where all the Alcatraz tours were sold out until Monday. Fortunately, the sea lions sit around and bark and stink year round, so we could share that experience with our relatives. A sourdough bowl of clam chowder later we were off to Golden Gate Park, where we saw the Conservatory of Flowers, the buffalo, and a few other must-see sites. We had planned the whole day around Cha-Cha-Cha, a great Cuban place on Haight near Stanyan in San Francisco, only to find a 90-minute wait. The Middle Eastern place up the street looked cool: 60 minute wait. We wandered into a Mexican hole-in-the-wall, sat down and were pleasantly surprised with a great dinner. We went home by way of Blockbuster, where we rented a movie Stephanie raved about, The New Guy. We watched it. It was funny and clever, and not nearly as moronic as it looked the advertisements and the trailers.

Sunday, Stephanie had to leave early for her flight; Rae, Paul and I were joined by Rae's friend Jenny for an Oakland A's game at Network Associates Coliseum versus the Chicago White Sox. We had Club Plaza seats that were, thank goodness, in the shade. The A's won 7-3, which made it a fine afternoon of baseball. Dave Justice stole a homerun from Chicago's first batter in the first inning, and they never really showed any spark after that. We sent Paul on his way home and could look back with pleasure on a lovely weekend.

Why Teachers Are Different

This is a new running head in the column, and it will feature, from time to time, the little epiphanies I experience as I learn how teachers are different from other people. This week, I was signing up to be a substitute teacher at the Orinda Union School District. The head of personnel was being pessimistic about my chances of getting a job at the middle school here; she said there had been several first-year teachers last year and the experience had been bad. I said that I, of course, would be different. She told me she'd been in private business for 20 years and that in the time she's been in personnel at the school district, she's always been amazed at the fact that every teacher who walks in is completely confident, "I'm the one." I don't think you could teach if you weren't an optimist. To your core.

I was kidding with my friend Fran about forgetting things. She said it could be useful for teachers; "That way, if yesterday was awful, you'll forget it before you start teaching today." Sound advice, I suspect. Like a newspaper or magazine, every issue is a blank slate, a fresh start.

Rae Re-Ranked

Here's what Rae had to say about getting her fencing ranking renewed:

That 70's Show News

Fascinating news for people who, like Daniel Dern and me, love That 70s Show. This was forwarded by Daniel:

Carroll Cat Column

John Carroll (America's greatest living newspaper columnist). Cat column. Need I say more?

Computer Industry News

Craig Reynolds' Technobriefs

Craig Reynolds cruises the net for you:

Cool HTML Trick

I was reading one of Joe Brancatelli's columns when I noticed that the status line at the bottom read, "If you're reading down here, we must be boring you." I asked him how he did it. This line of HTML goes inbetween <HEAD> and </HEAD>. I am using it now myself, for a different message.

<SCRIPT>defaultStatus="If you're reading down here, we must be boring you..."</SCRIPT>

Daniel Dern: Great 404 Message

A 404 message is that bland message you get when the web site you've entered can't find the page you've asked for. Daniel Dern found one such message that is both profane and amusing. Language alert. Rated R. Just as I was putting the column to bed, I found another cool 404 message myself.

The Top 15 Plots Rejected by Movie Studios

Number 5! Huzzah!

The Top 13 Signs Your Motivational Speaker Is Depressed (Part I)

And a No. 12. Who's hot baby?

Spy Kids II

You want the facts? Go to the Internet Movie Database.

In television, the writer is king. He is granted the title of producer, or executive producer, and he gets a "created by" credit that insures he gets paid every time any episode of the show is aired, anywhere, forever. In movies, on the other hand, the writer is treated like Kleenex--cheap and disposable. They may not seem cheap. You can make $70,000 and up for writing a motion picture screenplay, and most of them are never produced. I have met people who have written 20 unproduced but paid for screenplays. But writers are cheap in terms of respect. Platoons of them are used on most films, and credits seldom reflect the contributions. Nor does the movie that appears on screen always bear much resemblance to the script. Well, movies are a collaborative form of art, they say.

But what happens when the contributions of writers are perennially ignored or undervalued? Eventually, they give up and produce scripts that are gibberish. Robert Rodriguez wrote and directed this big, colorful, entertaining dog's breakfast of a film, and that is an argument for the value of having a screenwriter who isn't also the director--Wood Allen being the only consistent exception I can think of off-hand.

What am I trying to say? The film makes no sense. The script has holes in it you could drive a Mack Truck through. It is a series of almost completely disconnected mildly entertaining anecdotes, many of which feature recurring characters who behave in a somewhat consistent manner. Edited more tightly, it might have been a reasonable film, but then it would only have been an hour long.

Great special effects, a reasonable job of acting by the kids (you scarcely see the parents, the grandparents are an afterthought), and an uplifting message. You won't feel soiled after seeing it (it is rated PG), but as the cliche about Chinese food has it, an hour later you may be hungry for a plot, a story arc--any of that stuff.

Rae found a site with an incisive review.

A Question For You

I admit, some of my movie reviews are a little cursory, and they are almost all weird, but here's the question anyway: I've had one request to create an index of recent movie reviews. If there is widespread interest in this, I'll do it. If it's just one of you, I'll consider it a compliment and move on.

Link-o-Rama: Dan Grobstein, Daniel Dern

Only one link from Dan Grobstein this week; he found this New York Times column

in which Friedman posits that corporate pressure had as much to do with the peaceful resolution of the India-Pakistan conflict as U.S. diplomacy, and maybe MORE.

Several from Daniel Dern, who noticed the News.com story reporting that Dell Computer is making Windows optional for some of its business desktops. He also found this story of Pooh Business in Lala land in LA Magazine:

Dave Methvin's PC Pitstop