this morning, while watching most of the german victory in the world cup, i happened across this article in the post describing the coming gender gap in colleges across the nation. hmm. so college women are emerging into the real world to discover that their male counterparts have been left behind...am i supposed to be upset about this? being a male college graduate (of only two years), this is great news, especially in a city that already has an urban myth about skewed gender ratios. in a year or so, i could actually start hyping myself as one of the few college-educated men left in the district. of course, anyone who believes that women are interested in a man's educational level is already a little crazy, so perhaps this is no big deal. then again...

on an unrelated matter, i'm enjoying a tasty calzone from the usda esra deli. they make a mean calzone de casa, which helps me through those incredibly frustrating days i seem to experience weekly. oh well, back to work.

the weekend was fairly sunny, for once; i managed to catch minority report, a great movie and i reviewed it also! other than catching some rays, not much else...which is as it should be. sometimes you just have to kick back and relax.

the man who inspired 'blade runner' and 'total recall' was both prolific and thought-provoking: philip k dick. this time, an even briefer story has been adapted into a major motion picture, without the usual naming sacrifice: unlike do androids dream of electric sheep or we can remember it for you wholesale, the powers that be thought minority report was cool enough to keep its own name. i'd never read the story but since i had enjoyed other pieces of his work, i figured minority report would be a good move. add in spielberg , cruise and max von sydow and you've got a seriously big box-office contender. despite straying from the short story, the main premise is the same: in the future, police-work has moved from post-crime detection and punishment to pre-crime prevention, through the use of psychics who can predict events before they happen. the system is fool-proof, or at least everyone believes it to be so, until the head of the unit, john anderton, discovers that the pre-cogs (the three psychics who predict crimes) have labelled him a murderer, with a victim that he's never even heard of. Anderton, predictably, pulls a logan's run, moving from policeman to runner in one of the best movie escape scenes ever. despite sounding excessively science-fiction oriented, i found that the movie's style didn't rely upon the gadgets and wizardry in a way that dehumanized it. instead, the futuristic details complement a tale of good intentions that could take place today, or fifty years ago. the themes displayed throughout are universal, and setting the story in the future only makes the premise appear more logical and the characters more like those of today, caught in a trap of their own time. cruise, as john anderton, could be a scarred cop plucked from the streets today, rather than the future, as could most of the characters. through the story, an overriding tale of humanity itself is broadcast, so that the story of a child lost and the lengths people go to bring back what is lost forever, resonates with the audience.

the strong story and cast are supported by a directorial style that focuses on light in a way that is almost the inverse of 'blade runner'. in 'minority report', all is full of brightness, from the sun-bleached streets of dc (i loved the inclusion of woodrow wilson plaza, but hated the typical nyc subway scene instead of the metro) to the luminescent shopping centers of the future. in addition to exposure, spielberg's judicious use of special effects range from the subtle (pervasive consumerism) to the incredible (ai driven spiders, dancing cereal boxes, etc.) All are done well, and help set up a reality that seems in many ways to be the day after tomorrow. rather than indulge in a darkened noir, like scott, spielberg manages to make dc of 2085 appear addicted to capitalism, a sort of chinatown in daylight experience. for a director not accustomer to subtlety, the ability to frame a man fights against the world story in terms that are not inherently depressing is laudable. the huge de-humanized advertisements on blimps flying about the trash-ridden steets in blade runner have given way to personalized gap ads which address each customer by name in minority report. no doubt, american studies majors will be looking at this movie for years to come as a jules-verne like indicator of the direction our society is moving, covering the lack of privacy and the desire to conform. even still, it is a bright future, even if the innocent are imprisoned (after all, the moral dilemna of the film rests upon the idea that perhaps people are wrongly imprisoned), and should the rights of a few outweigh the needs of the many? the utilitarian in me bristled at the thought of dismantling a system that could work as well as pre-crime appears to: in the story, unlike the movie, not only are murders prevented, but also petty crimes like forgeries and tax-evasion. imagining dc without any crime is cool enough, but to eliminate all fraud as well would be too golden a goose to give up.

it is, as total recall was, a thinking man's action movie. the idea of inexorable fate is also tweaked: through his knowledge of his own future, anderton is given the chance to back out of it unharmed, yet he seems drawn towards it if only for the desire to understand why he would perform such a violent act. when at last he does discover the truth, he both recognizes the absurdity of his situation and simultaneously gives in to the awful orchestration of it all. only the pre-cog cassandra called agatha (her two compatrious are named Dashiell and arthur, a tiny joke that christie fans the world over will probably laugh at) can sit and watch as his actions unfold, one by one, constantly telling him he can disobey the future only to watch him ordain it, piece by piece. the only significant flaw in the film is the paradox of the premise: how can anderton kill a man he's never met unless the pre-cogs instruct him to? (sure to start a lengthy argument, at least in my case) thankfully, although the movie only deals with this in passing, it is a minor item that doesn't detract too heavily from the film. after reading the short-story, it is interesting to note that this conundrum is the point of the entire exercise, and since the explanation in the story doesn't translate well to the big screen, perhaps it is just as well that not all is explicated. in the end though, 2 out of 3 people will agree: minority report is the rare big-budget movie that manages to satisfy on every level, from incredible visuals to good dialog, cinematography to plot. minority report has raised the bar on movie-making not only for this year, but for large budgets and directors forever.

it's officially over. still, a valiant effort...a day of blog silence will now be observed.

we may be down a goal but we're playing our best game of the cup so far...still plenty of time left to equalize.

if you're not watching the game then stop reading this and go to ESPN right now!

so much to write, so little time. first up today, an aside on the clique phenomena. i've always thought that i was on the edge of the pop-cultural zeitgeist (this is the third time in as many days as zeigeist has come up in regular conversation for me), having a blog and all, but the idea of web cliques was new to me. much like the old-school web ring concept, cliques are groups of sites about a common concept. unlike the more democratic web-ring, though, cliques involve a single site maintaining a list of other sites it feels are worthy to include links back to the main clique. the social concepts alone are dizzying, especially in cyberspace where social mores are in flux and identity itself is hard to establish. it's a post-modern american studies grad student's great idea for a thesis.

one of the more intriguing aspects of cliques however, differs strongly from web-ring: the concept itself may be the point. several cliques calling themselves 'elite' establish hard and fast rules for what can and cannot be eligible for inclusion. sorority rush has moved onto the internet, only unlike reality, where one can be black-balled for nuances not easily noticed, websites tend to deal in empirical certanties, so it's often obvious what would make one ineligible for clique inclusion. in the end, though, it comes down to whether your site is cool enough to make the grade, which is inherently subjective. in this context, even if your site didn't contain useful information, or was amusing, if it simply looked interesting, it could be included. aesthetics have trumped utility for the web then, a process that reifies the notion that a medium that is free and open in many respects results in creative exploration with unknown results. why go to amazon.com when you can admire the dude where's my car clique for free? and are these sites merely eye-candy, or are people conversing on them and forming some sort of social unit (capable of ostrasization) that exists completely independently of geography and nationality? on-line communities are strange enough, but to throw groups together with almost nothing in common is an adventure that's interesting to explore. could a clique actually get motivated to do something, or would it be only at the behest of its founder?

anyway, i'll be creating a subsection shortly under icing that should contain clique info...icing will hopefully become the repository for all random stuff of this nature; i'd prefer not having to include images with any clique links, but we'll see how it goes...

i'm in the adoration clique now! in honor of it, i'll even throw up their image! explanation forthcoming...

saw the bourne identity last night...then brad got the nerve to review it here for your pleasure. it's a great flick that didn't deserved to get upset at the box office by scooby doo. oh well. as i mentioned yesterday, i was almost killed while doing some gardening...attempting to try to establish a beachhead in our garden, i accidentally cut mid-way through an electrical cable that was, of course, live. a loud bang ensued, along with the appropriate sparks, causing my to jump back in shock. when i approached the smoking cable, and shook it out of the socket it had been plugged into, i noticed that there was a large hole in the clippers that i had been using where the electricity had completely destroyed some of the metal. damn. good thing i was wearing gloves (and the clippers were insulated as well) or i could have been a crispy critter...it's odd, to think that every day we're only a few minutes away from a bizarre death. thank god for prescription drug companies who may be able to find a way to prevent these freak occurrences from killing us.