Wing Bowl X

Culture / /

Every year, on the Friday before Super Bowl Sunday, Philadelphians gather at the First Union Center for a different type of contest: The Wing Bowl. A tradition that started 9 years ago, the annual Wing Bowl festivities start at the crack of dawn. The audience tailgates in the parking lot while the contestants prepare to eat as many Buffalo wings as possible in a 30-minute time-span. Its become a hallmark of Philly life, with more than 20,000 people showing up for last years event. Only in Philly. Last year’s winner is nicknamed “El Wingador”, and he ate 137 wings in 30 minutes (the highest score of all time was 164 wings!)

Particularly interesting, and more disgusting than eating 100+ wings in 30 minutes, are the Qualifying Stunts performed by wing bowl hopefuls. A good stunt typically includes some sort of gross variety of food, eaten quickly and in mass quantities (strange, as I would think that has little to do with your wing-eating ability). Highlights this year include people eating: Four pounds of tripe in 20 minutes, a pigs head (including snout, cheek and the brain), A dozen hard boiled eggs with shells in 24 minutes, fifty raw clams in fifteen minutes, three pounds of head scrapple and bottle of hot sauce in 20 minutes, and one pound uncooked penne pasta with only 8 ounces of water in 20 minutes. Only in Philly…

1/25/02 – Update: El Wingador does it again. 143 total wings (81 in the first 14 minnutes). Three time champ. I love the nicknames these guys have; there was a 15 year old student in the contest – his nickname is Lord of the Wings…

Why be a Magician?

Arts & Letters / /

alan moore: magician is a site with various odds and ends written by Moore. I found most of it to be interesting. It includes some loose plans for a comic-book Grimoire, an article explaining why he became a magician, and some interesting correspondance with Dave Sim (creator of the long running independant Cerebus comic that I wrote about a while back).

Completely unrelated: Steven Den Best comments on the timely release of the new Ridley Scott directed, Josh Hartnett vehicle, Black Hawk Down.

Very Secret Diaries

Movies / /

Time to lighten things up a bit. This Cassandra person is doing a series of stories about Lord of the Rings characters’ secret diaries. Its hilarious. Homosexual overtones abound. Check them out:

Funny stuff, unless you think the homosexual overtones are heresy or something. Also, check out this Ninja site, its funny too. Mighty fine basassery. [thanks S�m�l]

Ordinary People

Arts & Letters / /

Radio Diaries is a collection of National Public Radio programs that were designed to give a voice to people not typically represented in the public forum. Particularly interesting are the prison stories (2001’s main theme), though the audio journals of teenagers, workers, and the elderly are good as well.

This past year, five inmates, four correctional officers and a judge were given tape recorders. For six months, the diarists kept audio journals and recorded the sounds and scenes of everyday life behind bars: shakedowns, new inmate arrivals, roll call, monthly family visits, meals at the chow hall, and quiet moments late at night inside a cell. The series is an intimate and surprising audio portrait of prison life.

The series aired in on NPR’s All Things Considered in January 2001.

In the beginning…

Computers & Internet / /

In the Beginning was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson: An intelligent essay dealing with the trials and tribulations of computer Operating Systems. Of course one of the big problems he discusses is Metaphor Shear (which is basically the point at which a metaphor fails), which is ironic because he uses quite a few metaphors himself in the essay. One of the best is when he relates the Hole Hawg (an incredibly powerful drill that with drill through just about anything, but also incredibly dangerous because it has no limitations or cheap safeguards to protect the user from themself.) with the Linux operating system. The essay is a great read, and goes into much more than just Operating Systems. Highly recommended.

If you like Stephenson’s fiction, you might also want to check out The Great Simolean Caper, an interesting story set in the not to distant future. It shares some common ground with Stephensons other work (namely, Snow Crash) and is quite an enjoyable read. Its also a bit scary, because it brings up quite a few security and privacy concerns. With the advent of digital cable and set-top boxes, companies are starting to track what you are watching on television, whether you like it or not. I’ve seen the data myself, and I think the advertising industry is going to go wild when these numbers start piling up (the data I saw showed enormous spikes and troughs roughly coinciding with commercials). The sneaky set-top boxes in Stephenson’s Caper might seem unlikely, but we’re really not too far away from that right now…

THEY are coming!

Arts & Letters / /

The Day They Let Bernard Leave by John Robinson (.pdf file) : A cryptic and ambiguous short story in which a man named Bernard has a very strange day. Everyone is staring at him; even, sometimes, being nice to him. Strange. Anyway, its a good read if you don’t mind the ambiguity of it all. Is Bernard as lucky as everyone thinks? I’m not so sure. Anyway, Robinson is an interesting fellow, known to many as “Widgett”. He runs a website called, NeedCoffee.com which is quite an interesting mix (not unlike Kaedrin, but more interesting and older:). He also has a production company called One Tusk and recently pubished a book of poetry called Love Letters Unsent to People Unmet. Check it out. Another story by Robinson: Necrogarchy, another interesting offering…

Sorry for the lack of updating lately. Things got a bit busy during the holiday season, plus I can’t seem to run into much in the way of interesting stuff lately, so you’ll have to bear with me. I did get my Best of 2000 movies list up (yes, thats 2000, its a year late, I know). Lets see, what else? I’ve been spending a lot of time at Everything2 lately. Its a fun place.

Tabula Rasa!

Arts & Letters / /

Dialogue on Film and Philosophy by Ulf Wilhelmsson (in rich text format) : What if, say, Quentin Tarantino met Aristotle, Herakleit, Plato, Jean-Paul Sartre, David Hume, Immanuel Kant and other famous philosophers. What would it be like if they all sat down and had a conversation on film and philosophy? Ulf Wilhelmsson attempts to expore these ideas in this interesting little essay. Much of it plays out like an informative introduction to various philosophies, as the aformentioned participants spout off about their particular areas of interest and eventually apply them to film. Obviously, this is much more entertaining if you are at least somewhat familiar with the various participants. Most of the philosophers are very well known, but I’d be suprised if many people knew all of the film scholars mentioned (Wilhelmsson thoughtfully includes explainations for the more obscure folks that show up). Theres also a bit of a lighthearted tone that lets some of the philosophers even get rowdy (at one point St Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle yell “Tabula Rasa!” in unison). Interesting reading. [via Wood S Lot]

Reflections on LotR

Movies / /

By the way, I saw Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring on Teusday night (or Wednesday morning, if you prefer), and I was completely blown away. I think I must feel the same way people felt when walking out of the original Star Wars. I would describe the film as a sweeping epic, in the true sense of those words (before they were perverted by the use of critics describing the like of, say, Gladiator) and Peter Jackson should be honored for being able to capture the spirit of Tolkien’s work while, at the same time, not shutting out those who are not familiar with the books. This is perhaps one of the most ambitious efforts in film history, and Jackson actually manages to imbue the film with the depth and texture that it demands. From beginning to end, the film showcases the grand beauty of Middle Earth, with graceful vistas, immense landscapes of forbidding snow or rolling greenery, and sweeping shots of terrifying battles, but don’t let that fool you – Jackson was able to temper the pace and suspence of the film so that its scale does not detract from it. This is grand filmmaking, yes, but Jackson also focuses on the human side, letting his wonderful actors do their thing and also showing the details of Middle Earth’s history and architecture… This is an adventurous effort at its best, and its one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time.

New Medium, Same Complaints

Science & Technology / /

DVD Menu Design: The Failures of Web Design Recreated Yet Again by Dr. Donald A. Norman (of Nielsen Norman Group fame) : The first time I saw this, I didn’t even realize that it wasn’t written by Jacob Nielson. I guess they’re partners for a reason – Norman writes much the same way that Nielson does, and with the same interface philosophy. This time they’re applying the same old boring usability guidelines to DVDs. But just because they are the same doesn’t mean they are useless – DVD menus are getting to be ridiculously and unnecessarily complex. There is something to be said for the artistic merit of the menu scheme, but most of the time it ends up being obnoxious (especially upon repeated viewings of the film). Its surprising that most DVDs haven’t learned from the mistakes of other mediums. In fact, I’m going to take this opportunity to bitch about DVDs – their interfaces and their content.

  • Animated Menus : Animated entrance and exit sequences are becoming more and more obnoxious. On occasion, I’ll run across a DVD that has nice looking sequences, but they are definitely a rarity. I don’t need to see a 3 second clip of the movie when all I’m trying to do is turn the commentary on. And Animated Menus don’t count as a “Special” Feature.
  • Extra Features :

    • One suggestion mentioned in the above article is to state the duration of each item in the Special Menus, along with a brief description instead of the now, often cryptic titles, often chosen more for cleverness than for informativeness (even more annoying: when the cryptic titles mentioned on the DVD sleeve are different than what actually appears on the disc!).

    • If you have a series of short 1 minute pieces, string them together into a single 20 minute mini-documentary with skippable chapters instead of making me click through each and every one. For example, on the T2: Ultimate Edition, there are something like 50 short pieces concerning makeup, F/X, etc… that are ungodly difficult to navigate.
    • A fifteen minute promotional film consisting of 10 minutes of clips from the film does not count as a documentary.
  • Commentary : A good commentary track is a gem, and I realize that directors like Stanley Kubrick can’t be troubled to sit down and talk about their movies (not to mention that he’s dead). But even if they can’t reanimate Kubrick’s corpse, they should be able find someone else to do a good, insightful commentary. Two excellent examples: the commentary by Japanese film expert Michael Jeck on the Seven Samurai DVD and the commentary by Roger Ebert on the Dark City DVD. Both are well done and very interesting, especially in the case of Seven Samurai, which is one of those movies that demands a good commentary (and is one of the few that gets it). I want to see more of this because while it is interesting to hear about the filmmaker’s perspective, works of art often take on a life of their own and move beyond anything the filmmaker originally intended.

Don’t get me wrong, I love DVDs. I love the quality and all the extra content, but its hard not to complain when only some good movies (and even some bad movies) get nice DVD treatment.

Fellowship of the War

Arts & Letters / /

Tolkien on Homeland Defense by Chris Mooney : An interesting article that draws parallels between Tolkien’s classic Lord of the Rings trilogy and the 9/11 tragedy. Mooney cites two passages from Fellowship of the Ring that are particularly poignant and resonate with our current situation. The first is an exchange between Frodo and the elf leader Gildor, when they meet just as Frodo and his companions embark on their journey from the Shire:

“I cannot imagine what information could be more terrifying than your hints and warnings,” exclaimed Frodo. “I knew that danger lay ahead, of course; but I did not expect to meet it in our own Shire. Can’t a hobbit walk from the Water to the River in peace?”

“But it is not your own Shire,” said Gildor. “Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more. The wide world is all about you; you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.”

“I know — and yet it has always seemed so safe and familiar.”

Sound familiar? We were all aware of the threat of terrorism, but our daily lives just seemed so safe. The second passage Mooney quotes is delivered by the character Aragorn, in which he makes the Rangers sound kind of like the FBI or the CIA. Mooney then goes on to compare LotR with the Harry Potter series of books, taking care to comment on the various religious nuts who are denouncing Harry Potter as satanic. Its a good read, check it out. [thanks Widgett]

By the by, the first reviews of Fellowship of the Ring (the movie) are in, and they all seem to be positive! Entertainment Weekly gives it an A, and Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers lists it at the very top of his list of films for 2001. Regular guy, “Rob”, was slightly less impressed (scroll down to bottom), but still gave the movie an 8/10 and said “It lived up to my expectations.” Score. I am encouraged by this…