Reviews of Many Things

Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately. Here's a pile of mini-reviews of things I've watched or read recently.

AWESOME THINGS

Wicked -- I saw the musical at the Orpheum Theater. If you're not familiar with it, it's the story of The Wizard of Oz retold from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West. It was absolutely wonderful. I have read the book by Gregory Maguire, and the book was good, but not amazing. The musical was a heck of a lot of fun, though. They changed the plot quite a bit, especially toward the end. Because, you know, musicals need happy endings. But it worked. It was a hoot!

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay -- This book by Michael Chabon is one of the most engrossing novels I've read in a long time. Young Czech Joe Kavalier escaped from Nazi-occupied Prague and made his way to New York City. There, he and his cousin Sam Clay, created a Nazi-bashing comic book, which lead to fame and fortune . . . and tragedy. The story is so well written, its descriptive passages so rich, that the pictures that formed in my mind were as vivid and clear as if I were looking at the pages of a graphic novel. The book walks the fine line between real life and fantasy. The characters and their relationships feel real, but some of the situations they find themselves in are as wild as the tales they spin in their comics. It's beautifully absurd, and absurdly beautiful. I would recommend this book to . . . well, pretty much anyone.

Star Trek -- Some people don't like the new film because it completely erases the original continuity. But after five or six TV series and ten movies, it was getting hard for Star Trek writers to come up with new plots that didn't contradict something that had already been established. The movie gets around that with time travel, an incident that changes the lives of young Kirk and Spock so that their paths unfold differently. (No ambiguity is left on this count. Uhura even refers directly to "an alternate universe.") So this is a whole new Star Trek, a clean slate. And some of the changes to the universe were HUGE. Certain characters die. A certain planet is destroyed. And certain characters are in a romantic relationship that made me double-take. (Let's just say Uhura kisses someone--not someone I expected--and there was no alien mind control involved.) And it was tremendous fun. It wasn't deep and meaningful, but not everything has to be. It was a thrilling adventure, and I loved every second of it.

Avenue Q -- Another Broadway musical, which I saw at the Orpheum over a month ago. It was a rather raunchy, adult homage to Sesame Street. It was hilarious, but decidedly not for all audiences. I loved the Bad Idea Bears, who always showed up whenever the characters had to a big decision to make, and helped the characters make the worst possible choices. ("I'm broke and unemployed. I don't know how I'm going to pay my rent." "I know what to do! Let's buy beer! Yay!")

LESS-THAN-AWESOME THINGS

The Underneath -- This children's chapter book by Kathi Appelt was a National Book Award finalist, but I wasn't really fond of it. It was an enjoyable melodrama, but the writing style was really irritating, and often rather overblown. Good, but not great.

The Escapist -- This graphic novel is meant to be a representation of the comic written by the characters in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. However, it really didn't do justice to the source material. At all. It was very disappointing, perhaps because the prose descriptions in the novel gave me such vivid images, and this comic didn't measure up to the pictures in my mind.

Strawberry Panic -- I'm familiar with the lesbian-romance-at-an-all-girls-school sub-genre of anime. I enjoyed Maria-sama ga miteru, and I expected Strawberry Panic to be similar. And on the surface it is. However, it is boring--horribly, excruciatingly boring. It ran for five DVDs, with barely enough plot for one, spread very thinly. It had far too many characters; I kept losing track of who was who. And the plot was stupid. Seriously, how does winning what amounts to a popularity contest for best lesbian couple qualify you for student government? Don't bother.

THE JURY IS STILL OUT

The Historian -- I'm about two-thirds of the way through this book by Elizabeth Kostova, but I'm really enjoying it. There are parallel plots in different time periods, as a girl searches for her missing father, and many years ago, her father searches for his missing professor, and many years before that, the professor searches for the real Vlad Tepes, also known as Dracula. Actual vampires stalk the father and the daughter. (It's nice to see sinister Old World vampires as serious villains again.) I can't tell yet how it will end, but it is a very interesting journey, rich and vivid and suspenseful. I'm leaning toward proclaiming it to be awesome, even though I haven't even finished it yet. *

The L Word -- I've been watching the DVDs with my favorite ex-girlfriend. It's a soap opera, to be sure. At times it borders on porn. Are all those sex scenes really necessary? I don't think so, but it's not bad enough to make me stop watching, because I actually care about some of the characters and want to see what happens to them. But these ladies make some really, really bad life choices at time, and I end up screaming at the TV rather often. I'm at about the middle of season two (out of six). At present, I'm planning to continue buying the DVDs and watching them. Not sure what the final verdict will be. It's witty and interesting, but often very frustrating.

* Addendum 6-4-2009: I finished reading The Historian. It is thoroughly awesome in every respect. It is suspenseful, vivid, and has a nice little twist at the end.

AmazonEncore

Amazon has redeemed themselves. This has nothing to do with last month's incident, but rather with another issue of importance to me: orphan books. If you're not familiar with the term, an orphan book is one which is out of print and unavailable, but still secured by copyright law. These books are essentially lost.

Well, now Amazon is starting something called AmazonEncore. They plan to take out-of-print books which had good reviews but low sales and republish them, giving them a second chance at life. (Amazon's release didn't use the term "orphan," but some bloggers are.)

Right now, Amazon is starting with a relatively recent self-published book that will likely benefit from Amazon's marketing. However, if Amazon so chooses, they could potentially republish older works as well. Amazon is big enough to afford to buy the rights to these orphan works and put them back into print, and that would mean renewed income for the authors of those books.

This experiment definitely bears watching. I hope it takes off. I'm looking forward to seeing which direction it goes.

If you're interested in orphan books, you should also be keeping an eye on the Google Book Settlement. There's some controversy over that one. It might not be in the authors' best interest.

Lotus Focus: Cat and Moth

This morning I unlocked a new balance game in Wii Fit: Lotus Focus. This is an exercise in sitting perfectly still. The screen is dark except for a single candle burning in the middle. If you move, the candle goes out. The game tries to distract you with various sound effects, which are easy to ignore, and then by having a moth come and flutter around the flame.

It wasn't the moth that got me, but my cat Luna. As soon as that moth fluttered across the screen, he ran up to the TV, absolutely rapt. I've never seen him interested in anything on the TV screen before. He tracked the moth back and forth, pacing as he tried to figure out how to get through the "window" that separated him from his prey. I broke my stillness trying to repress my laugh.

Anyway, I plan to keep at Wii Fit every day. I make myself endure all the yoga exercises, then allow myself to have some fun with the balance and aerobic games. The balance games are all very fun (except for Lotus Focus, which really seems more like yoga). Even though I'm terrible at them, they're cute and they make me laugh, so I enjoy them even as I fail. Under aerobics, I really enjoy the step games. However, I'm apparently incapable of doing the hula hoop ones. I just can't get the movement right, so I've never actually last more than a few seconds. I'm trying to psych myself up to revisit the strength exercises, which are as un-fun as the yoga ones, and twice as painful.

And if you have Wii Fit and you think the strength exercises are all easy and you're wondering what my problem is, have you ever seen Kung-Fu Panda? On his first day of training, he does so poorly that his master declares, "There is now a Level Zero." That's where I am. Level Zero.

But overall, I'm thinking the Wii Fit was a worthwhile acquisition. I haven't noticed any improvement in my fitness yet, but it's only the fifth day.

Wii Fit, Second Wind

Tonight I tried the aerobics and balance exercises on the Wii Fit. Unlike the torturous yoga and strength exercises I did last night, the aerobics and balance exercises are actually rather fun. Mind you, I'm still completely terrible at them, failing every single one. However, they are at least enjoyable. Especially the step exercise, which is sort of like Dance Dance Revolution for people who are not physically capable of playing DDR. Maybe I can work myself up to the point where I might be able to handle actual DDR. Now that would be fun.

And these exercises did make me sweat. My calves are now sore from the workout. I take that as a good sign.

Maybe if I keep at the aerobics and balance exercises long enough, I'll get to the point where I can handle the yoga and strength ones. But for now, I'm glad I found some exercises I enjoy.

I logged 21 minutes. I would have kept going, except I have plans for this evening.

Wii Pfft

Well, I got Wii Fit today. I logged 19 minutes tonight, which does not include load time, demos, etc. I was actually at it for well over an hour.

I feel as though I've paid a bucket of money for a torture device. I might as well go out and buy a rack and thumbscrews to go with it. It is definitely not a game. It is not fun. It is exercise, pure and painful.

I selected my Mii, entered my height and date of birth, and then the system weighed me. It was quite depressing to see my little digital avatar inflate like a balloon. I know I'm obese and horribly out of shape. I have a lot of chronic aches and pains that I use as excuses not to exercise. Blah blah blah, whine whine whine. It's still disheartening.

Still, at least the trainer guides my pace and posture. So this might work better than my long-since-abandoned efforts to exercise solo with the inflatable balance ball. We'll see how it goes over the next few weeks.

Amazon - Resolution?

I am somewhat mollified. Amazon has apologized for their "embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error."

It's not necessarily the most satisfying apology, since it didn't actually contain any of the words apology, apologize, sorry, or even we regret any inconvenience. However, since big businesses rarely apologize for anything, getting something that can be summarized as "we admit we screwed up, and we're fixing it" is probably as good as it gets, and maybe a little better than I hoped for.

I do hope they issue a separate and sincere apology to the authors of the books that were de-listed. Even if it was only for a couple of days, that still represents a loss of income for the writers.

A hacker claimed credit for the fiasco, but he may well be lying. There's also a rumor that it was a mistake made by one employee in France, but that's hearsay from one former Amazon employee who claims to have heard it from a friend who still works there. ("I heard it from a friend of a friend" is the stock urban legends, and should always be regarded with a bit of suspicion.) However, that story does fit with Amazon's description of a "cataloging error."

As someone who works in a library and occasionally has to globally edit subject headings, I can see how this could happen. I once had an automated system flip the tags on biographies of boxers (the athletes) to Boxer Rebellion (an incident in Chinese history). At least that one was easy to fix. It was quite obvious which books had nothing to do with China.

However, tagging all gay and lesbian books as "adult" (Amazon's code for pornography) does not seem like an accident. The particular subject matter is too politically charged. I can see how it might have been the malicious act of one employee, unknown to and unsanctioned by management. Or the company may have picked a scapegoat. If the person who made the change did it maliciously, I hope they are fired. If they did it because their boss told them to, I hope their boss is fired. But the truth of who, how, and why may never be known with certainty.

At any rate, Amazon seems to be fixing the problem swiftly. Behold, the power of public outcry. Some people may point to the quick fix and say that the criers were all worked up over nothing, however, one wonders if the fix would have been forthcoming without ragestorm of negative publicity.

Thank you, Amazon, for fixing the problem and sort-of apologizing. And thank you, Twitterati and bloggers far and wide, for blowing the lid off and letting the air in.

Boycotting Amazon

I am so angry at Amazon.com right now that I can barely write about it. If you're not aware of the situation, here are a few links.

Amazon stripping sales ranking from gay & lesbian books

Amazon Follies

Amazon Censorship

Amazon.com de-gays search results, sales rankings

Open Letter to Amazon Regarding Recent Policy Changes

Amazonfail: A Call to Boycott Amazon

You will find a whole lot more if you search for #amazonfail on Twitter or Google. Googling Amazon rank brings up still more articles.

It's disgusting that gay-themed children's books, young adult novels, history books, and other books with little or no sexual content were labeled "adult," stripped of their rankings, and made invisible to searches, but a compilation of Playboy centerfolds and other straight books with explicit content were not likewise censored. A double standard has clearly been applied.

I am finding some gay and lesbian content when I'm searching now, but I have no evidence (and no confidence) that all of the de-ranked books have been restored. I think Amazon realized there was a massive backlash against them, and they are quietly restoring the rankings and hoping people will forget they were ever gone.

There is NOTHING about this on Amazon's site, neither on their homepage nor on on their blog. And all they've said to the media is that it was due to a "glitch." (Which is not at all what they told the first few concerned authors who discovered that their books had been de-listed.)

I have bought a lot of things from Amazon.com over the years, but unless they not only correct this situation but also issue a sincere apology instead of a lame "glitch" excuse, I will be taking my business elsewhere.

C'mon, Amazon. Own up to this mess. Fix it and tell the truth about what really happened.

UPDATE - 4-14-2009