'Stranger Than Fiction' or Why Zach Helm Let Me Down

I really enjoy the movie Stranger Than Fiction. I actually watch it pretty regularly at the moment. Once every few weeks or so. The story is complex for a movie and still intricately woven together so as to not be too complicated or leave too many loose ends.

Everybody in the movie gave an excellent performance. Will Ferrell in particular really delivers with a very subtle and nuanced Harold Crick. The direction, photography, sets and editing were just as good. Over all this movie was almost perfect. There is one small problem.

Every time the movie ends I am frustrated by what the movie could have been. Zach Helm, the writer, has written a beautiful script about a writer of fictional tragedy. She finds out her latest books isn't as fictional as she thought. That when she kills her hero in the end, someone in the real world, living the life she has written, will also die.

The story, with the hero dying in the end, is described as her master piece. Powerful and beautiful. She chickens out because she can't bring herself to knowingly kill someone for her art and because she has come to know and like the real live version of her hero. Her master piece becomes just an OK novel when she changes it so he lives in the end.

Fine. Great. I get the story, and it's a good one. It has a happy ending and we can all walk out of the theater with a smile on our face and a craving for high quality baked goods.

If Zach would have had the balls to write the story where the hero dies in the end. Reveal the wake left by what looks like on the surface the life of an ordinary man; to cause everyone to walk out of that theater devastated by the loss of his hero that he so expertly caused us to fall in love with. That would have been a cinematic master piece to rival the literary one in his movie.

Kevin Smith almost pulled the trigger in the end of Clerks when he didn't earn it. Someone talked him out of it and it saved the end of his movie.

Zach Helm, earned it, but he failed to pull the trigger. Otherwise, the movie might have been depressing. Zach, please grow a pair and don't fail to write the hard story. I don't want to be let down again.

Barack Obama Lacks Experience?

I again just heard a Hillary supporter tell me that she is having a problem getting behind Obama because he lacks experience.

When I asked her what experience Hillary had that really stood out to her, she said Hillary's years in the Senate. When I asked what Hillary had done in the Senate that impressed her, she couldn't answer me with specifics. Just that she was there.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not trying to say Hillary hasn't done anything in the Senate. I know she has. But so has Obama. Both in the short time he has been in the U.S. Senate and during his time in the Illinois legislature.

It doesn't take long to find information on the internet about a candidates experience. To find out how they work with the opposition. To find out what they are passionate about. To find out how they achieve compromise and if they can do it without compromising their core principals.

Charles Peters wrote in his column in the Washington Post about Obama's accomplishments. His column started like this:

People who complain that Barack Obama lacks experience must be unaware of his legislative achievements. One reason these accomplishments are unfamiliar is that the media have not devoted enough attention to Obama's bills and the effort required to pass them, ignoring impressive, hard evidence of his character and ability. (more...)

It's Literally Obama/Biden

When I got up this morning, I literally found an email from the Obama Campaign that announced Joe Biden as the running mate for Obama. I have to say, I am a bit surprised. Pleasantly surprised. I am literally a fan of Joe Biden.

Biden's friendship with McCain lends additional credibility when Biden criticizes McCain's positions on a number of issues. I was literally very happy to hear Biden use McCain's own words to damn him. Those are the kinds of attacks that I can stand behind. Not personal attacks with dubious basis in reality, but specific and legitimate criticism of statements and policy.

Biden's rich work and knowledge in foreign policy, amassed after literally decades working on these issues in the Senate is a huge benefit, both to the campaign and to an Obama presidency.

Biden's personal story, which literally continues to this day, of being an average American living a working class life, will go a long way towards bringing in the Clinton democrats that are still hesitant to embrace the Obama candidacy.

I literally think this is an excellent choice by the Obama campaign. I also literally think Biden literally said literally a lot in his speech today.

2 Mac Household

Last night Kelly and I became a 2 Mac household. Her laptop was seriously hosed this past week and we had been talking about replacing it anyway as it was quite old and the wireless didn't really work all that well. Her XP machine becoming unusably unstable was the perfect excuse for us to get her a new one.

Friday night we went to Best Buy and took a look at the laptops they had to offer. We checked the HP that I had researched as the most bang for her buck in the Window's world as well as a couple of others. We played with the touch screen HP, though that is not really a portable computer (would look great mounted on the wall in my kitchen and running OS X... hint, hint Apple).

Then we took a look at the MacBooks. Kelly has enjoyed using my MackBook Pro, but wishes she was more comfortable with it. She doesn't like that she can't really do anything on a Mac without help from an experienced user. She gets all the Windows she wants at work (and I still have my tower running XP). So she decided to take the OS X plunge with me and get familiar. This is actually great because I still don't have to be annoyed by Vista.

She was already a Firefox, OpenOffice (NeoOffice on the Mac) and iTunes user, so this isn't a huge shift for her. She uses Gmail for email, so he mail client isn't changing. I setup her iChat to log into her GTalk account so she is set there. I can't really think of anything she uses that will substantially change from Windows to OS X.

Bonus, if she wants to reacquaint herself with Unix her laptop is a Unix machine so fire up ye ol' Terminal and have at it. I think she is going to be very happy with this new computer. I know we will look sexy as hell with the Panera, eating our yummy sandwiches and using our trendy computers with big old smiles on our faces.

.mobi TLD And Mobile Versions Of Websites

When did the .mobi tld get approved? How did I miss this event entirely? Not like it is some earth shattering news or anything, but I am usually up on this stuff. I found out about it when I was looking up info for UFC 90 in Chicago on my iPhone. They sent me to ufc.mobi.

I am pleased to see how many company websites are making an effort to create a mobile optimized version of their content UFC and Olive Garden being the two most recent experiences. Problem. They suck. On my iPhone anyway, the are often worse then just visiting the regular site.

I hope this changes in the future. Not surprisingly, Google has it nailed.