Three Things About Atlantic City

ONE
I like that the best bet at a Casino is to not play. It gives me a good reason to sit around my hotel room in my underwear, writing.

Know who else gets a lot of writing done in casinos? Woody Allen.

Know who else compares me to Woody Allen? My mom.

TWO
I have a habit of finding one place where I like to eat and then never eating anywhere else ever again. In Atlantic City, that place is the Asian fusion restaurant in Caesar's, which is called KWI.

The first time I was in Atlantic City, I went on a tour of casinos because I'd read in a book that doing this was cheaper than gambling.

When I went through Caesar's, this place smelled amazing. I promised myself that if I won enough money to afford it, I would come back and have a meal. That night, I got exTREMEly lucky on the river, and so the next day I had lunch at the place.

It. Was. Amazing. I ate with a bunch of Asian-New Jerseyite high rollers and one of them shared his snow pea tips with me. The - Best Korean barbeque. Some other thing that wasn't on the menu that I don't remember that was delicious. Fuck. Ing. Amazing.

Last weekend, I took my second trip to Atlantic City, and I didn't waste any time. I think I ate three meals there in three days, and the portions were so big that I pretty much just ate that and breakfast.

The food there was so good that I actually had to start eating better food once I got back to New York. I remember the first time I ate a sausage bagel breakfast sandwich after I got back from AC. I was disturbed that one of my usual New York meals seemed bland and flavorless, but I was more disturbed that maybe it had always been that way and I just had never noticed it before.

That's the problem with affected luxury - you can get used to it.

PostScript: After writing this, I realized that after a single night being bumped up to a Trump Taj Mahal luxury suite, I finally rented a new apartment.

THREE
Despite my best efforts and self-awareness that I was a living cliche, staying at an Atlantic City casino reminded me of the following bits of media:

Ocean's 11
Ocean's 13
Rounders
The Apprentice
This episode of Cowboy Bebop, particularly the scene where they're standing in the futuristic elevator and it lists all the games you can play at the casino and what floors they're on.

ribble's Brief Foray in to 2012

I starting writing this post in mid-October, when I was checking Electoral-Vote.com three times a day. Even then, for those of us closely following prediction sites, it was looking like a landslide - (this Politico article [link via E-V] presents some of the many theories on why the press didn't see it that way, but it's all sour grapes now I suppose.)

So I'm thinking: what can I, an intelligent but unexceptional political observer, predict about the future (say, 2012) without doing any research? Could I, for example, predict who will be THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?!?!?!*

No.

But here are some guesses about who the Republicans could put up to run against Obama, a little bit of no-research handicapping, and then a sort of general statement that dismisses the whole exercise as pointless.


* I am writing a lot of things IN CAPS because I am reading the new JOHN HODGMAN and he does that a lot.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (Cal.)
Arnold has what David Bornstein might call a "small-big" problem - he would probably do pretty well if he ran for president, but it would be illegal.

Yes, you have to be born in the United States to run for president, and it would take nothing short of a constitutional amendment for him to be able to run. There is an "Amend For Arnold" movement out there which I refuse to google but I imagine has lost some momentum in the last three years or so.

So why mention him? Well, I like the idea of an amendment that allows someone born outside the U.S. to immigrate and run for President. Back when only white men could be President, maybe it didn't matter, but in this modern world, why not open things up to Americans with international backgrounds or funny accents?

It might be difficult to pull this off while my side is in control of things in D.C. just because the other guys already have their guy in mind, but I'll I'm saying is - Madeleine Albright 2016. Maybe at 79, she'd have to be at the bottom of the ticket, but come on. That would be awesome.

Leaving that aside - I almost feel like Schwarzenegger is too good a politician to take a show in 2012.

National name recognition, a carefully cultivated position as a moderate, awesome 1st lady, governor of some place (it doesn't super matter where you're governor of if you're running for president), and maybe even able to win California if he doesn't screw anything serious up in the next however long - this guy has too good a shot to try to run against a popular president with a high approval rating running for re-election. That's a sucker's bet. Look for a new Amend for Arnold movement around 2013 or 2014 anticipating a 2016 Arnold for President campaign.


Palin
Ugh. When CNN isn't talking about Obama's dog, they're talking about McCain's people calling Palin an idiot. And when they aren't talking about that, they're talking about Palin 2012.

It kind of makes sense to put these two ideas together if you assume running as a Republican in 2012 is a sucker's bet and Palin's some sort of sucker.

But I don't think Palin is the idiot we've been lead to believe. I certainly don't buy these anonymous campaign aids saying she didn't know Africa was a continent and couldn't name the countries in North America, and shame on Fox News, Jack Cafferty and whoever else for repeating it.

(Reminder to journalists: these McCain staffers were the same people making shit up about Obama.)

Sitting in her hotel lobby, Palin looked a lot smarter talking to the press than she ever did before. Now she has two years to get her act together on national and international issues instead of two months. She may surprise us.

Okay, that said, Palin represents a certain identity for the Republican party that I don't think is any longer tremendously effective or even very electable.

Maybe it's liberal wishful thinking, but I think if anyone's at the wheel for Republicans after they've had a chance to regroup, they'll start thinking of themselves as a pro-capitalist (as opposed to pro-business), more technocratic party that believes in climate change and puts results ahead of culture wars.

Absolutely none of that describes Palin.


Gov. Bobby Jindal (La.)

Young, fashionably non-white, willing to take charge of a place in trouble, from a state that had earned a reputation as nigh-ungovernable before he showed up, governor of anywhere and ready to make an argument on where the GOP should be going, Jindal is a serious guy with a serious shot at the nomination.


Gov. Jim Pawlenty (Minn.) or any of these other governors you hear about

Governors generally beat senators in presidential elections, but presidents tend to beat challengers. These guys are where the media is looking for the GOP's great white hope, if you'll excuse the term. Look for at least two governors to join the early hunt against Palin 2012.

REMINDER: I am not being more specific because I have not done ANY RESEARCH.


Alan Keyes (Illinois or wherever)

Alan Keyes is the perpetual African-American Republican candidate for president who no one takes seriously (or maybe this last time he ran as an independent or something? I am flying without a net here, people.) Last time Keyes was noticed by anybody: when he ran against Obama for Senate in Ill. after the original guy dropped out due to being corrupt or something.

Look for Keyes's name on your ballot on Nov. 6, 2012, and expect to be surprised to see it there because you have not really heard anything about him, and then to forget all about it by the time you leave your polling place.


Newt Gingrich

I am a diligent watcher of Stephanopoulos, where former house speaker and former kind of a jerk Newt Gingrich made occasional appearances on the round table.

From where I was sitting, Gingrich was coming across as a sort of lapsed elder statesman - he'd had his shot, been around, still knew the score for the most part, but could sort of do his thing as a commentator because no one really thought he'd be getting back in to politics (see Carter, Gore, Ayers, etc.)

So maybe a month ago, Gingrich was on and giving it pretty hard to the McCain people. Specifically, he was making a lot of anti-Obama arguments much more strongly and starkly than McCain had been doing it. Gingrich was sounding a lot less like a guy spending his retirement writing book reviews on the internet and a lot more like, well, like Rush Limbaugh.

At first, I just assumed that Newt had been politicized by the election just like everyone else. But when I was writing out my notes for this list, it occurred to me that maybe Gingrich was looking ahead, positioning himself for a run at 2012.

Gingrich is a return to the past, but he's still got a nationally recognized name, and there are those who think that what McCain did wrong was not being ENOUGH of a 1998-style Republican. Without doing any research, I'd take a chance and rank Gingrich among them.

I would not be surprised to hear about Gingrich taking a shot in 2012, but I'll be even less surprised when the media starts mentioning it a few years from now.


Why It Was Especially Dumb to Spend a Month Writing This

Here's a big secret that ought to be conventional wisdom: Obama is going to win reelection in 2012 no matter who runs against him. Here's why:

1) Incumbents tend to be re-elected.


2) The stronger challengers will wait for 2016.

Biden has said he won't run, meaning the Republicans will have a lot of the advantages in 2016 that Democrats had this year - basically, an open field against an incumbent party. Smart contenders will bide their time. The 2008 field will be taking their last shot before they're too old to compete.


3) Obama probably won't screw up in either his governing or in campaigning.

The most opinionated Republican commentators have adapted this very annoying "just you wait - you'll see we were right when Obama starts screwing up slash being a liberal terrorist" sort of attitude since the election. Fact is, Obama probably won't screw up.

The most persuasive evidence I see for this is how Obama ran his campaign. My mom was volunteering for the man in New Mexico. One week she came up to Brooklyn to visit, and there happened to be an article in the Times about an Obama campaign office in Pennsylvania or someplace. Mom said she recognized almost everything described in the office from her own Obama campaign office.

That sort of national consistency takes a master administrator. If you don't want to take Mom's word for it, check it this last word from FiveThirtyEight's On the Road series. It's almost enough to make you pity McCain - that guy was out organized from start to finish.

Obama is someone who learns from his mistakes and corrects them. Here's how Clinton won reelection: he never announced he was running and he started campaigning early for the time (like, two years before the actual election). Obama knows this. He will do these things.


4) Either the economic crisis will be resolved and Obama will be able to take credit for it, or it won't be resolved and the electorate will look to the Democratic party to fix it.

Reelections generally have more to do with the economy than anything else - it's the biggest reason Clinton won in 1996.

I believe that if anyone can solve this thing, it's our man Obama. But maybe he won't, or no one could - no matter.

The American electorate tends to favor Republicans on national security and Democrats on the economy. It's the number one reason Obama won this time out. Even if the economy is as screwed or more screwed than it is now, if Obama looks like he takes it seriously (and he will), he'll win reelection.

Don't buy it? Take 2004 as an example. That year was a national security election. The country was in deep trouble in two wars.

The American electorate still thought Bush was the only one who could be trusted with a national security crisis. It didn't matter that Bush was the one who had gotten us in to that mess in the first place - Americans trust Republicans with national security and Democrats with the economy, full stop.

Six Comics About Obama

Six Post-Election Comics About Obama

Three Mock-Cynical Comics About Obama
"Barack Obama and the Invasion of Time" from Bob the Angry Flower (compare to "Kerry Wins", maybe the saddest non-Peanuts comic ever written)

"The Two Presidents" (context starts here-ish or you can read up on Presidential Candidate Kerry Edwards in the news post here. Obama is becoming a strangely defined character in Overcompensating, take a look at the strip here to see what I mean.)

"President Hussein" at American't

Two Genuinely Sentimental Comics about Obama
"Dear Mr. Obama" from American't

"$15 from Leendert Geffen" from Donation Derby

One That Could Go Either Way
"Morning in America" from Cat and Girl


Tellingly, and lot of the cynical and genuine comics are coming from the same people.

My favorite thing said in a comic about Obama, from before the election:

"The engine of America is smoking and making clanky noises, ladies and gentlemen. We can worry about the radio when we hit the next gas station -- if we can make it there. Obama is not perfect but for a hitchhiker he's pretty good-lookin and he has a half-gallon of gas and says he knows how to work on cars and he doesn't seem too weird so let's pick him up."

Thank you, Jeffrey Rowland.

[update 8/14/09: Gastrophobia. I remember when I first started going through online comic archives, I would inevitably come across the strip the artist made for 9/11. Maybe now I can start coming across the strips everyone made for Obama's election!]

Presidential Stereotyping

Based on the prejudice map.

John McCain is known for *
... championing campaign reform
... straight talk, not snide talk
... having complete temper tantrums

Sarah Palin is known for *
... winning the world's longest snowmobile race four times
... her strident views on religion
... dirty tricks in Alaska

Obama is known for *
... his command of the English language
... his use of strategically-placed pauses
... firing up crowds with his oratory

Joe Biden is known for *
... his role as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
... misspeaking
... long-windedness at Senate hearings

ribble's Guide to the Holidays

January 1
New Year's Day
Break as many of last night's resolutions as possible. Sober up. If already sober, wait out hangover. Shower. Take it easy.

January 27
My Birthday
Perfectly placed just long enough after Christmas that people are no longer burnt out on gift-giving, my birthday is one of my favorite days of the year. I look back on the past year, see how far I've gone, and then take all my friends out for dinner so they can meet each other, get wasted and tell me what they really think of me.

Having all these people who like me together in one place is also a very important opportunity to impress girls.

Also in January
Superbowl Sunday
The one day of the year where I can pretend I care about not only football but also commercials. Also one of the few times where everyone in America admits the importance of both snacks and beer simultaneously.

February 14
Valentine's Day
Is there any other holiday with such a rich contrast between two arbitrarily distinct groups of people? Valentine's Day is either all romance and flowers or all sucking and suck worthiness. Either I have a girlfriend on this one day of the year or I don't. I don't see why we've all got to get so worked up about it.

March 17
St. Patrick's Day
Okay - best St. Patrick's Day ever: My gigantic Irish friend Ben, an errant Canadian and I stagger across the fields of South Wales with a half bottle of Bailey's (having drunk the other half). In New York City, though, this is basically a bar holiday. I am a man who simply does not go to a lot of bars.

Mid April
Fiesta
Fiesta is a week-long San Antonio party that comes just before it gets too hot to do anything in San Antonio.

Fiesta used to be great when I was a kid because all our friends across the city would come down to my neighborhood for the King William Fair.

I went back recently and got to see Fiesta as the adults saw it - crowded and exhausting (although the parade was still awesome). Oh, well. You need to eat at least one funnel cake a year, may as well be here.

March 20-ish
First Day of Spring
In New York City on the first day of Spring, everything is beautiful and perfect in the world. Here's not one but three excellent songs about this particular season in this particular city: Jonathan Richman's "Springtime in New York", Jonathan Coulton's First of May, and, of course, the classic How About You? Woo, Spring.

Memorial Day / Labor Day
Because it was always hot in Texas regardless of "season," I am just now becoming acquainted with the value of the beach-going Holidays. As a result, I always get these two bookends mixed up.

July 4
4th (July)
The success of this holiday depends entirely on one's ability to get a good angle to see fireworks. Sometimes it helps to bring your own.

October 31
Halloween
Last year, I crashed a Columbia party with Marmo while I was dressed as the Chinese Zodiac.

I pinned a bunch of tiny stuffed animals to myself for each of the 12 animals in the Chinese Zodiac calendar. Then I decided my costume was too cryptic, so I took some masking tape and a sharpie on the train with me on my way to a party and I labelled myself - "Year of the Dog," "Year of the Rat," etc., and then three lines of tape saying "I am the Chinese Zodiac" on the front.

I couldn't find a stuffed rabbit, so I just drew one on a white T-shirt and put a label on the front of my coat saying "Ask to see my bunny."

Some Thursday in November
Thanksgiving
Traditionally the time when I go home and let my Dad cook for me while I play with my baby brother and half-watch American football on TV. I have tried to explain how good my Dad's cooking is to other people, but I rarely succeed.

Recently, a friend of mine told me a close friend of hers that had been living in France for years was going to finally be back in town in a few weeks. I listened, and then I said that during our coming visit to my parents' place, we were going to eat my Dad's ribs. It was only right afterwards that I realized that I had felt like my news about the ribs was just as important as my friend's news about being reunited with someone she hadn't seen in years. That's how good my Dad's cooking is.

December 25-ish
Christmas
I watch Die Hard every Christmas.

December 31
New Year's Eve
Tied with my Birthday for my absolute favorite holiday. I like to think back on the past year, think ahead to what I can expect to come, make a lot of promises and just get absolutely toasted so as to watch things blow up high above the city, fully prepared for a new year full of the brand new holidays to come.

Ribble's Favorites

There's no curling and no women's two-person bobsled, so I'm no expert on any aspect of the Summer Games. As a result, I've had to choose who to root for based solely on athletes' countries of origin. I've got a short list of my go-to favorites here:

1. U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

2. New Zealand (I have a friend from New Zealand)

3. Mexico

4. Great Britain

5. Canada

And then, in no particular order ...

Brazil
Cuba
France
Argentina (for basketball)

And, if no one else is around ...

Italy
China
Russia
Korea (either is fine)

Things to Carry

This is what Dorothy Gambrell carried around the world, or at least what she was carrying when she made it back to Brooklyn from her trip around the world on boats and trains.

Reading about Dorothy's supplies reminded me of something I've thought about every week since I read the last few paragraphs of this interview in Wired Magazine in April of 1996.

In that interview "cybertheoretician" (there's a Wired Magazine neologism if I've ever heard one) Marcos B. Viermenhouk, by way of explaining humans as both increasingly specialized and increasingly interdependent, said "Pull Bill Gates out of his office and put him in the veldt - in four days he's a bloated corpse in the sun."

As a fifteen year old born on the The Day of Precocity, I found this idea appealing on a number of levels. The one that's stuck with me, though, is that I could be picked up from anywhere at any time and dropped off on the Veldt or anywhere else without the slightest bit of warning. Where would I be then? Would I outlast 1996 Bill Gates?

As a result of thinking of this idea for the last 12-odd years, I've become very conscientious of the things that I carry with me when I leave the house (I've always assumed that Viermenhouk would be good enough to let me keep my immediate personal effects.)

It isn't really a question of survival skills, after all, since if we're assuming the Veldt could hit you at any moment, absolutely anywhere else is possible as well. It may be useful to be able to set traps in the Australian outback, but drop me in downtown São Paolo and I'd much prefer a cell phone and a short stack of US currency. Flexibility is the key.

First, I always carry my black Swiss army shoulder bag with me wherever I go. Like an alligator with a shotgun, this thing always takes people by surprise. It can carry any amount of anything. In my pockets, I have my wallet, cell phone and keys. Always headphones.

In the bag, I always carry boxcutters (a habit from my gripping days), leatherman or multitool, an umbrella, matches, a small (eyeglasses screw-size) screwdriver, a cheap corkscrew, a small (2" long) philips' head screwdriver, a couple of pens, a pencil for crossword puzzles, my checkbook, two buttons (for clothes), one button for Nerdcore Rising, sunglasses, reading materials, the keys to my old employers' office, and various medicinal crap: antibiotic ointment, two very old pieces of nicotine gum, a powerful French lip balm which I never use except in winter, and a single sudafed PE which I have fantasies about grinding up and putting in someone's coffee should I ever be kidnapped.

With this full kit, I usually feel prepared for anything. It's not the perfect set of tools for a round-the-world trip, but for the challenges I run in to in day-to-day life, I do pretty well. I also for some reason enjoy the idea that I could take apart almost any sort of small electronic device, although I rarely know what to do with them afterwards.

With the issue of Veldt preparedness out of the way, then, my mind often begins to wander to the logical next question: who would I bring with me in to this excursion in to the random? Who possesses the crucial combination of useful skills and an agreeable personality for any possible situation?

For some reason, I always imagine myself with this person in one of the crucial scenes of Cerebus the Aardvark Volume 4: Church and State #2. I'm thinking specifically of when Cerebus is trapped inside a giant tower made of stone skulls while he's bringing a perfect sphere of gold to the moon.

As we all know, Cerebus was accompanied then by the Flaming Carrot in the famous Flaming Carrot Crossover.

The Flaming Carrot was a valuable travel companion as he not only possessed the wherewithal to cope with such a strange situation (in fact, one is left with the impression that he often caused exactly that kind of situation himself), but he also allowed Cerebus to move much more easily up the tower in the darkness of space as his carrot top is constantly on fire but does not consume itself. Handy in a pinch.

Names I Considered for My New iPhone

iPster

iPhel (long i sound)

iPhle (short i sound)

I finally settled on iPple

Interesting Things I Have Done

One reason I'm decent at making up stories is that I never feel like I have all that many non-fiction stories of my own. I just tend to tell the same ones over and over. Here, then, is the definitive list of interesting things I have done, in no particular order.

Gone skinny dipping
Travelled across Europe.
Hitchhiked from Wales to London on a Sunday (this is hard!)
Taken a hot air balloon ride in Africa.
Gone to Summer camp.
Accidentally hit on a girl who was ten years younger than me.
Consistently dated way out of my league.
Started dating at 15.
Grown up with someone who is disabled.
Worked on film sets with movie stars.
Directed short films.
Produced short films.
Driven a cube truck in New York City.
Made out on top a 15th-century watch tower.
Watched a lot of movies.
Learned a lot about T.V.
Managed the Pioneer Theater on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Travelled across this great land.
Never been to Mexico.
Lived in Ecuador.
Gone to an international school.
Fallen in love.
Learned to speak Spanish, mostly.
Bought a piece of art.
Eaten some really good ribs.
Made really good friends with my cousin.
Gotten a baby brother.
Written for a newspaper.
Written a movie script.
That's it.

updated 3/5/08

Ocean's 13 Lingo

My notes from the movie. Who takes notes during a movie? I am finding this whole List Posts stage I'm going through very disorienting.

"But there is a lot of that in the Oceans films where they say 'Let's do a Susan B. Anthony or a Sticky Fingers or a Monkey On a Sidetrap, Sling it Down on the Woodshelf, and then put it Oh for Two, Oh For Five' and everyone goes, 'Yeah, yeah let's try that, let's try that.'"
-Eddie Izzard on The Daily Show, Thursday June 7, 2007.

"We have to offer a Billy Martin."
"It's a Reverse Big Store."
Irwin Allen
Wowser
Pancake Eater
The Brody-Prop
Dock the Showboat
Cattled
Cougar-Sponder
Gilroy
Set Up a Cartwheel
Pulled an Audible
Saw a Blitz Coming
Working a Frame
"I've gotta jump."
"So it's back to the Susan B. Anthony again."

I also like the running gag where whenever Pitt and Clooney talk about their girls, they each seem to know exactly what the other one is thinking despite the fact that neither ever finishes a thought or a sentence.

Words Behind Talking Heads During "Making Flippy Floppy"

From Stop Making Sense, of course. In order of appearance:

Dollface
Public Library
Deli
Onions
Air Conditioned
Under the BFD
Dugs
Videogame
Sandwich
Diamonds
Pig
Facelift
Star Wars
Grits
Dog
Time Clock
Digital
Babies
Dustballs

Before Dinner Time
Before You're Awake
Late At Night


ps What the hell am I doing here? Is this sort of thing an early sign of asperger's?
pps I want to dance like David Byrne

Some Comics I'd Option if I Were a Real Producer

Return to Sender

Fans (one of the cheaper story lines, I suppose. Maybe one of the ones involving mind control?)

Powers (obviously).

Bookhunter

What I Did Today

30th St. between 7th Avenue and 8th Avenue: Furriers
29th St. between 7th Avenue and 8th Avenue: The P.I.T.
28th St. between 7th Avenue and 8th Avenue: Floral and plant stores
27th St. between 7th Avenue and 8th Avenue: Toy wholesalers
26th St. between 6th Avenue and 7th Avenue: The place where I got my hair cut last time (finally!)

All I Had to Go On

These are the four albums my mom listened to incessently when I was growing up. I'm pretty sure I still know all the lyrics to each of these records. Complete with iTunes links, because I am a commercial whore.

She's So Unusual
Cyndi Lauper

Rhythm of the Saints
Paul Simon

Graceland
Paul Simon

Nick of Time
Bonnie Raitt

Triangulating Texas Through Popular Culture

Unlike New York, L.A., and ... actually that's it, Texas is a part of the world that you can't usually get a good perspective on from movies and T.V. shows.

It's important to understand Texas because it's like America except more so. Here's one movie and two T.V. show about Texas - if you watch all three and take away everything that makes them unique, you should get Texas in a nutshell.

True Stories (a Talking Heads movie).

Like Stop Making Sense, their 1984 concert movie, the Talking Heads' True Stories is implacably odd, quietly affecting and fun to watch. The stories of the film center on a small Texas town, all set to actor performances of songs from the Talking Heads album of the same name.

This movie is just so Texas I could scream. It's a collection of short stories on acutely Texas subject matters, all told with an over-the-top Talking Heads style, inhabited by these energetic, open and positive Texas people.

Just a sample: a husband and wife who haven't spoken to each other in ten years sit in an enormous suburban dining room with their family. One of the kids asks the father about the future of the town where they live.

In an enormously upbeat, generous song, the man lays out a whole plan for the future of the town centered on making it a pleasant place to live so that the young people who grew up there and went away to college want to come back. He uses the food from the dinner table to illustrate his points.

King of the Hill

When I saw King of the Hill for the first time it took me about ten minutes to think "Huh. That's totally Texas."

I think it was the kitchen that did it for me.

Austin Stories

Austin Stories, which I guess you can only buy here, was an early MTv sitcom about three slackers living in the titular city. I remember it was the only thing on T.V. at the time which seemed to be even roughly about the life I was living. For example, one of the three main characters was kind of fat.

I haven't seen this show since I was a kid. Does writing a blog entry about it obligate me to buy the DVD? Probably so, right?

More Texas Moments

Castaway
The opening and closing sequences of the movie are on a Texas ranch. The shot of a FedEx truck rumbling down a rural road is the truest depiction of Texas in winter I remember seeing in a movie.

Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Pee Wee is looking for his bike in the basement of the Alamo. Pee Wee is sort of Texas, himself - loud, over the top, dances to "Tequila."

Paris, Texas
Paris, Texas is about two brothers reconciling after years apart, but it's also about driving from one end of Texas to another.

The Getaway (1972) has a great bit where the villain talks with Steve McQueen on a barge on the San Antonio Riverwalk. Great, big, cowboy-hatted Texas villain, too - you could see the same type of guy in Blood Simple.

ribble's Nostalgia Quest

For about six months after this post, I went on a nostalgia quest. I've been watching the T.V. I loved as a kid to see if it's worth a damn. Here's my first installment of results, in handy alphabetical order.


Animaniacs
Better than I remember

Animaniacs was just a great cartoon when I was a kid - funny with a lot of great cartoony action. Now, I'm old enough to get a lot of the jokes (want to see what I mean? Check out the Animaniacs Cultural References Guide).

Seriously, this is a work of genius. Yakko's song containing the names of all the nations of the world (in rhyme!) would be enough for this show to be remembered with distinction in cartooning / children's programming history.


The Critic
Just as great as I remember

The critic was a great, animated show that got dicked around by network programmers who didn't understand it until it was cancelled before its time (obvious reference. I would go so far as to say that it was the part Jon Lovitz was born to play.

The Critic was also a great New York show - there are a number of running gags related to the UN school - that was funny both before and after I moved to New York.


Danger Mouse
Just as great as I remember

I remember watching this show growing up in Scarsdale, N.Y., which means I must have been watching it before I was six years old.

Over the course of my nostalgia quest, I ran in to a couple of things that would be great if I were a kid, but weren't quite built for DVD. Danger Mouse is one of these.

The show tends to be a bit formulaic, but it's funny, it's British, and the cartoon action is great. I'm looking forward to someday turning off whatever Saturday morning dribble my kids are watching and making them watch this instead.

Plus: one of the greatest theme songs ever.


Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist
Better than I remember

Dr. Katz, presented in Squigglevision, always had a funny framing story arc, but the meat of the show was Dr. Katz's sessions with his patients, played by whatever aspiring comedian Katz could get to come up to his studio in Boston to record their acts.

It's consistently funny and sometimes sweet, but I think what my Adult Swim-watching generation is going take away from Dr. Katz is a worship of H. Jon Benjamin.

Now that I'm older, I get to understand just how well this show was made, the jokes are funnier and I get hear the early material of a bunch of young comedian, like Dave Attell, who would later get their own shows.


Fraggle Rock
Better than I remember

I watched Fraggle Rock with my friend, codename Charlie, at her place until we were both half asleep on her couch. What a great show! There are great songs, great characters (Charlie identifies with Red, who gets in trouble by trying to be too self-reliant), and always multiple storylines because there's the action above ground and the action below, each with a lesson learned.


Quantum Leap
Not as good as I remember

Quantum Leap I remembered particularly for consistenly raising the stakes. Even as a kid, before I started writing, before I became the sophisticated television viewer standing here today, I was impressed by how the show would always start off with, say, someone's future on the line and end up with, say, the survival of the two main characters, the history of the world and the survival of the human species at stake.

Now, though, the show is too long and slow to get my interest, I feel like I know what's coming, and no one's actions seem as logical. Too bad.


Reboot
Not as good as I remember

Reboot has already earned a place in history as one of the first full computer animated t.v. shows. The animation is still okay in the context of the story, but the DVD I watched, from the last, unreleased straight-to-video season, had gotten all tangled up in its story lines and promptly lost my interest.

seaQuest DSV
Not as good as I remember
Back in late December, the SciFi channel showed a marathon of every episode of seaquest DSV, which I diligently TiVod. As a kid, this was a very inspiring show, especially Jonathan Brandis' character, Lucas.

seaQuest DSV is something best watched in private, with no threat of judgement by others on my childhood heros. So last year I waited until my roommate went away for spring break and watched the second season.

What I really like about seaquest is that it takes the sci-fi adventure show out of space and puts it where it belongs, back on Earth. No faster-than-light travel. No instant communications. Justifiable makes a big difference to me, and exploring "the last unexplored region on Earth" always appealed to me. A lot of the show was ridiculous (their in-ship transportation says "thank you for using mag-lev") but the power of that idea got me, especially the Lucas character.

Johnny explains Lucas as the Wesley Crusher of the deep, but actually Brandis comes off as a clever, cool guy who I probably would have hung out with freshman year of high school. Which was remarkable because the writers loved to have Lucas tell us how scared he was like he was some sort of teen Boxey.

But it turns out that 1993 was 13 years ago. Effects never age well, and seaquest was an effects-heavy show. The dialogue isn't great. The ship is derivative (big viewscreen in the front of the bridge, etc.). Plus, especially in the beginning of season one before the show hit its stride, seaQuest seems to be developing too many ideas at once.

seaQuest was good for maybe a total of one season out of the two and a half seasons it ran. It relied too much on sci-fi conventions, like the giant viewscreen and, eventually, aliens, without thinking those things through. It had some potential, but it never followed through.


Space Rangers
Not as good as I remember

Space Rangers fell farther in my estimation than anything else on this list.

It was only around for about six episodes, and looking back I think I only ever saw the first one, but I was really excited about Space Rangers when I was a kid. I think it was the gun turrets in the space ships. I drew a lot of space ships with gun turrets in them after that.

Predictably, it turns out this was not a very good show. Hokey, bad effects, the aliens look just like the alien in a particular eponymous Ridley Scott film, bad dialogue, unbelievable plots, hero with too much hair, etc. etc.

But man, and I think this goes to the power of nostalgia, writing these two paragraphs alone was enough to make me want to go draw some spaceships with gun turrets in them.

ribble's Bad Habits

I've been producing films for First Sundays for only about six months (although I've put more work in some than others), but I've been screening films for over a year.

Screening other peoples' movies is fascinating. I have seen some great stuff that in some cases less than ten people before me have ever seen.

Even the bad movies that we would never show can have their moments. I watch almost everything, no matter how terrible, all the way through to the end for exactly that reason.

I remember one particular film about a man who may or may not be possessed by the spirit of a dead, 70-year-old Jewish woman that was awful, awful. Too long, no one acts rationally, not funny.

In the scene, the maybe possessed man, now institutionalized, is talking to the camera about getting a letter from his fiance, who is now marrying his best friend, and he finally realizes that he's thrown his life away.

For the last five seconds of the movie, the protagonist stops speaking in the 70-year-old Jewish woman voice he's been using for the duration and starts talking in the voice of a normal 30-ish man.

It's an incredible cinema moment. Truly amazing. I watched it over and over. And because no one would ever show such an awful 20 minutes of awful for ten seconds of genius, it is possible that I am the only one outside of the production that will ever see it.


Mostly, though, screening movies means I've watched a lot of bad shorts. It's pretty instructive. There's nothing like watching the same mistakes over and over to warn you off them forever.

I developed a shpeil for people directing audience films [under "CONTEST"] for the first time.

For the audience films, we ask writers and directors to keep their shorts to five minutes or less (about five pages of script).

When we screen films, the bar gets steadily higher for longer movies. Think about it - the longer the film, the more of our limited screen time we need to commit to it. We've got an official cutoff at maybe 25, 30 minutes but it's very, very difficult for a film that length to be funny enough for us to show it. No film is too short.

If you are making a short comedy film, please do everyone a favor and keep it short. Cut, cut, cut - that's my #1 AAA [Star] Most Important Suggestion.

The films I watch can usually tell the same story in a quarter the time because audiences pick up on stuff pretty quick. I have seen so many movies that would take over the world if they cut everything that wasn't funny.


When I give my shpiel to first time directors of audience films, I tell them to only write what they think they can do themselves. In my movie, I wrote in a white truck and a good-looking Southerner because I knew I could get those things. Before he writes, Victor has everyone in the cast and crew write out a list of locations where they know he can shoot for free.

It's not a requirement, but I tell writer / directors to make sure their films take place in more than one location. Audiences start to feel trapped or claustraphobic if they have to stay in one location too long. Usually wherever you're shooting can double as two locations anyway, like one apartment playing two different apartments if, say, two people are talking on the phone.

Plus, there's usually more than one place in a particular area where you can shoot in a single day. Location managers think about this shit all the time.

On a similar note, first-time directors are always afraid to move the camera. Move the camera. If you don't, you will bore your audience to death. Moving the camera makes your movie so much more interesting, it's like night and day.


I would also suggest that filmmakers bring in a DP, even if it's just your best friend who may or may not know how to use your camera. The director is constantly making decisions on a film set. It's best to be able to hand the camera to someone else so that you don't have to worry about keeping the actor's forehead in the frame in addition to, say, how good their acting is.

In the vein of making it easier on yourself, the rule of thumb in independent film is that the ideal number of people to have in a scene is two. Any more, and logistics, camera placement, booming and everything else becomes much more complicated.

For an incredible movie that rarely has more than two people in a scene, watch Brick. Or you can just read me gushing about it over and over again.

Of course, there's no end to the things you can learn about making movies. There aren't all that many masters. But making a movie isn't rocket science, and it is possible to make a good first movie. Start with this and let me know how it goes.

Look Like ribble

T-shirts I wear. IN REAL TIME!

Divided by origin.

ATLANTA

Orange Atari

Rolling Bones Premium Pit BBQ

Superman (fuzzy)



SALVATION ARMY FAMILY STORES IN SAN ANTONIO, TX

HEB Snacks Summer 2004

Tri-City Softball / Donaho #3

Gruene Hall / Texas' Oldest Dance Hall

Front: "Generators." Sleeve: ("everyone wins when the turbine spins")

Southwestern Bell Pioneers Volunteers

LAPD

Bobcat Football / Hinojosa #89

Reuniendo a la Familia Southwestern Bell Long Distance

Whataburger A1 Thick & Hearty Burger

Peppercorn Ranch Whatachick'n Sandwich (for a limited time only)

Luther Burbank Vocational High School 30 Year Reunion 1971-2001

Jack Daniels Old #7



DUMBRELLA

The Flabergasted Eagle

Loch Ness Monster Adventure Club

Mix Tape

From Scary-Go-Round: Front: "Welcome to Robotania" Back: "Main export: dismay." (ret.)



OTHER WEBCOMICS

Virginia (Note: non-ironic version)

The Internet is a Series of Tubes (from Superosity, this shirt featured the Ted Stevens quote next to an 8-bit Mario on a tube.)



VARIOUS

Dartmouth Reinventing Earth Week

The Owl Bar & Cafe San Antonio, New Mexico (the internet has a surprisingly large amount of information on this place when you consider it's in THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE.)

Front: Giant image of Sean Connery. Back (in courier: "The name's Bond. James Bond."

Harry's Roadhouse: "EAT. yum."

Front: "Ruprecht The Boy Wonder." Back: "World Tour 1987-2006," lists all nine places my current roommate has gone to school.

Front: Francis, State Highway Administration Maryland Arm patch: SHA Certified Heavy Equipment Operator Level III Label: SUi State Use Industries

Burmese alphabet

ribble's Stock Responses

"These things happen."
"You should write an angry letter."
"I believe you."
"Sounds about right."
"Fair enough."
"So you say." / "So you claim."
"Just so we're on the same page here."

Also:
"Oh."
"All right."
"Okay."

Sure, it's trivial, but I've noticed that these change every six months or so and I'm interested in keeping track.

'Tis the Season

It's finally summer, and in New York, that means it's five different seasons at once.

First of all, it's the hot season.

In San Antonio, heat and humidity meet you like a wall as soon as you get out of the airport, and I will maintain every day until my dying day that the heat in Texas is a lot worse than the heat here.

But San Antonio has a cooling infrastructure (central air, ceiling fans) that for whatever reason doesn't exist in The City. There's just better internal air movement down there.

As a result, and I noticed this for the first time the other week while helping my cousin the revolutionary in to his new place, I no longer even notice when I'm pouring sweat.


Second, it's smell season.

It doesn't stink in Texas for the simple reason that there are no people walking around on the streets down there unless they are walking to their car. People mean waste and waste means smell.

I've never found the stench unbearable, but I know people, even people who grew up here (Vickyheart comes to mind) who just can't take it anymore and occasionally have to run off to live in New Jersey or something equally absurd.

Third, it is roach season.

Roaches freak me out a lot less than they did when I first move to the city, but they're definitely the worst of the five things listed here.

I crushed my first roach of the summer on a subway platform this morning. The worst I've seen was on a turkey leg outside the construction on the west side of the Port Authority Bus Terminal.


My last roommate would flee the room and sometimes the whole apartment if she thought she even heard a roach.

Roaches are a good reason to keep a clean place. Mice are more manageable. I'm sort of hoping they come back now that I have a cat, but so far they've been too smart.

Fourth, it's real estate season. Everyone but everyone, from the cute little red-haired girl who lived down the street to My Cousin the Revolutionary to my friend Gigi, who is overjoyed to finally be escaping Jersey.

New Yorkers love love love talking real estate. This Park Slope Reader guide to Park Slope blogs [PDF] has four categories: food, real estate, literary arts and kids. That's my neighborhoods priorities in a nutshell.

By the way, if you are interested in a two-bedroom in a small building in Prospect Heights for about $2000 a month, and you are cool, my email address is on the top right there.


Finally, it's tourist season. Even in Texas, people always assumed I was a New Yorker even when I wasn't, but it didn't take long for me to be able to spot the visitors on any subway platform, public park or street corner.

It takes maybe three months to understand comprehensively how to move in this city (layout, busses, rush hour, etc.), so the easiest spots to pick out tourists are sidewalks and subways.

They have to talk a lot about how to get where they're going, travel in groups that always look similar to each other, often seem travel weary because they don't tend to find the time to just sit down, and have a mildly annoying habit of just stopping in awkward places that make it difficult to walk around them.

Tourists also look different from New Yorkers, who are slimmer then most Americans just because we walk everywhere.

I don't want to sound anti-tourist because I know it's an important part of the city and brings in money, but if I am anti-tourist, I come by it honestly.

I grew up in the King William District of San Antonio, a big tourist destination for a big tourist city, and I lived in a front bedroom facing the street. Tour busses came by every hour or so. As I result, I spent my entire childhood paranoid behind closed bedroom shades.

I realize New York must sound pretty bad, infested as it is by heat, smells, roaches and tourists. The fact is, New York is always gorgeous as long as it's not obscenely cold. There is no place I'd rather be.