Friday, April 23, 2010
Comments in English, please
It's one of those things one would think goes without saying: one should post comments to an English language blog in English. I'm tired of spam in Chinese. Any comment I see in a language other than English I will delete. Oh, and I doubt I would like spam in English either.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
That's what's going on around the world
Al Roker of the Today show is notorious for doing human interest soundbites and then turning it over to local weathermen with his trademarked catchphrase "That's what's going on around the country, here's what's happening in your neck of the woods," having said nothing whatsoever about the national weather.
For all his quick wit, Al Roker is perfectly incapable of changing his catchphrase. Lately he has actually been talking about weather in his weather segment. With the Iceland volcano Eyjafjallajokull continuing to spew ash into the air, it makes sense that Roker talks about how the jet stream is taking the ash over to Europe. Sometimes he then says something about weather in America, sometimes not. Either way, his segue to local weather is exactly the same.
For all his quick wit, Al Roker is perfectly incapable of changing his catchphrase. Lately he has actually been talking about weather in his weather segment. With the Iceland volcano Eyjafjallajokull continuing to spew ash into the air, it makes sense that Roker talks about how the jet stream is taking the ash over to Europe. Sometimes he then says something about weather in America, sometimes not. Either way, his segue to local weather is exactly the same.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Attempted suicide at the laundromat
The show: Medium
The episode: "There Will Be Blood... Type B," aired last Friday on CBS.
What happened: Allison lets Jennifer (Vanessa Marano), a homeless teenager haunted by dreams of a cold-blooded killer, stay in her house, despite objections from her husband and daughters. After a few nights, Jennifer steals money from the house and goes sleep at a laundromat. There, she dreams of the killer calmly killing a cop. She wakes up in such despair from that dream that she tries to drink an entire bottle of Clorox (or some other brand of bleach). Luckily, Allison dreams of Jennifer's suicide attempt and is able to get her to the Hospital in time to save her life.
What has me wondering: Most laundromats I've been to are practically run by Ferengi. Want two drier sheets? Pay a dollar. I seriously doubt that a laundromat owner would leave an entire bottle of Clorox just lying around for anyone to use. However, this doesn't rule out that the bottle of Clorox belonged to another customer. Also, the editing gives the impression that if Allison hadn't dreamt Jennifer chugging the Clorox, Jennifer would have died. Even if we accept there were no customers in the laundromat at the time (one of whom forgot her bottle of Clorox), where was the laundromat employee at?
The episode: "There Will Be Blood... Type B," aired last Friday on CBS.
What happened: Allison lets Jennifer (Vanessa Marano), a homeless teenager haunted by dreams of a cold-blooded killer, stay in her house, despite objections from her husband and daughters. After a few nights, Jennifer steals money from the house and goes sleep at a laundromat. There, she dreams of the killer calmly killing a cop. She wakes up in such despair from that dream that she tries to drink an entire bottle of Clorox (or some other brand of bleach). Luckily, Allison dreams of Jennifer's suicide attempt and is able to get her to the Hospital in time to save her life.
What has me wondering: Most laundromats I've been to are practically run by Ferengi. Want two drier sheets? Pay a dollar. I seriously doubt that a laundromat owner would leave an entire bottle of Clorox just lying around for anyone to use. However, this doesn't rule out that the bottle of Clorox belonged to another customer. Also, the editing gives the impression that if Allison hadn't dreamt Jennifer chugging the Clorox, Jennifer would have died. Even if we accept there were no customers in the laundromat at the time (one of whom forgot her bottle of Clorox), where was the laundromat employee at?
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Treat every weapon as if it were loaded
I've been hesitant to nitpick Army Wives because I don't know much about the Army, specifically, how it differs from the Navy in the small details, where the nits live. As I begin to watch Season 3 on DVD, I need to remind myself again that in the Army, you can salute indoors under certain circumstances. But I'm not sure Colonel Burton saying goodbye to General Holden before he went to command NATO in Brussels counts as one of those circumstances.
There might be a bigger nit in Trevor's storyline in which a soldier under his charge accidentally fires his rifle to the deck after returning from a training exercise. After finding out who the soldier is, Colonel Connors asks who the team leader is, and throws the book at him in NJP (non-judicial punishment) for failing to make sure his soldiers' rifles were cleared at the end of the exercise. Trevor explains to his wife Roxy that the Army is strict, even about negligent discharges in which no one gets hurt. However, it seems to me as if the soldier whose "gun" went off actually gets off scot-free.
I wasn't an Infantryman in the Marines (couldn't have been even if I had wanted to), but even I got it drilled into my head to "treat every weapon as if it were loaded." So even if I was completely certain my rifle was cleared, I would still have put the 'dial' in the "safe" position and I still WOULD HAVE KEPT MY FINGER OFF THE @#$%ING TRIGGER! This is not to say that no Marine has ever accidentally shot his rifle. But something tells me that the Marine whose rifle went off would bear the brunt of the punishment.
Of course Army Infantry is different from Marine combat support, but one would think they too would be trained to treat every weapon as if it were loaded. I suppose such an incident is the only reason the writers could think of for getting Trevor in trouble and making Burton jump to the conclusion that Connors was coming down hard on LeBlanc to indirectly get back at her.
There might be a bigger nit in Trevor's storyline in which a soldier under his charge accidentally fires his rifle to the deck after returning from a training exercise. After finding out who the soldier is, Colonel Connors asks who the team leader is, and throws the book at him in NJP (non-judicial punishment) for failing to make sure his soldiers' rifles were cleared at the end of the exercise. Trevor explains to his wife Roxy that the Army is strict, even about negligent discharges in which no one gets hurt. However, it seems to me as if the soldier whose "gun" went off actually gets off scot-free.
I wasn't an Infantryman in the Marines (couldn't have been even if I had wanted to), but even I got it drilled into my head to "treat every weapon as if it were loaded." So even if I was completely certain my rifle was cleared, I would still have put the 'dial' in the "safe" position and I still WOULD HAVE KEPT MY FINGER OFF THE @#$%ING TRIGGER! This is not to say that no Marine has ever accidentally shot his rifle. But something tells me that the Marine whose rifle went off would bear the brunt of the punishment.
Of course Army Infantry is different from Marine combat support, but one would think they too would be trained to treat every weapon as if it were loaded. I suppose such an incident is the only reason the writers could think of for getting Trevor in trouble and making Burton jump to the conclusion that Connors was coming down hard on LeBlanc to indirectly get back at her.
Monday, March 22, 2010
The cabbage
The show: JAG
The episode: "Bridging the Gulf," from Season 10.
What happened: Harm investigates an aviator from the USS Kennedy who authorized his gunner to immobilize an Iraqi fisherman's boat that was approaching an oil terminal. Harm concludes Lt. Gutierrez (Randy Lewis Hernandez) was correct to stop the boat, but he soon himself finds himself having to make a similar decision: while getting his F-18 quals, he's diverted to the oil terminal and shoots a Cessna out of the sky before that plane can strike the oil terminal. The plane Harm shot down then turns out to have had an Iraqi dignitary on board. Turner comes aboard to investigate and Harm is grounded but continues his investigation ashore, aided by Col. Najjar (Andrew Divoff) of the Iraqi Army, leading to a climactic shoot-out in which the Iraqi fisherman (Ahmed Ahmed) seems to die and the body of the real Iraqi minister is found in the terrorists' lair. Now cleared, Harm resumes his carrier quals, while Turner escorts the Iraqi fisherman to America to rejoin his family, who were taken over there to put them out of the terrorists' reach.
What doesn't quite make sense: As Turner gets ready to board the COD back to America, the fisherman feels compelled to explain to Turner why he's alive: in order to make sure that the terrorists wouldn't menace the man's family as they made their way out of Iraq, the terrorists had to be made to think that he had died and that therefore there was no reason to go after his family. However, this explanation is really intended for the viewers. I mean, why would Turner care if the fisherman was dead or alive? Turner's investigation was on Harm for blowing up the Cessna, not on Gutierrez for incapacitating the fishing boat. Did the fisherman come aboard the Kennedy prior to the wire operation, or did Turner go ashore at some point that we were not apprised of?
If there is a character who needed that explanation is Col. Najjar, who saw the apparent death of the fisherman and almost avenged him by killing a terrorist he irately described as "the son of a syphalitic whore" (with such badly spelled subtitles, we can only assume the spoken Arabic is not much better). Harm, who seems to have been aware of the strategy, has to make Najjar back down.
While we're on the subject of onscreen text, in the end credits, the actor Nabeel is identified as an "Iraqi soldienr." Actually, there is a character that looks like a lowercase "m" with part of the rightmost line erased to make it look like an "r." In fact that would have worked if you started out with an "n" rather than an "m." To make a mistake like that in Final Cut Pro would actually be an accomplishment, because, as far as I can tell, there is no such character in Unicode.
And another thing: According to the IMDb, an FA-18 can't fly at the same speed as a Cessna, at least not the way they're shown in this episode: Although a Cessna's maximum speed is close to an FA-18's stall speed, "the FA-18 is not flying nose high with flaps extended (to maintain minimum airspeed)." Assuming that's correct, shooting down the Cessna may have been the only thing Harm could possibly have done under the circumstances.
The IMDb also says that Turner's theory "that the Cessna was on autopilot and returned to it programmed destination after Harm tipped it off course" is invalidated by the fact that a Cessna's autopilot function is for a course, not a destination, and thus if it was possible for Harm to nudge the Cessna away from its destination, the Cessna should not have snapped back on course for the oil terminal.
On that last point I'm willing to be a little more forgiving, for after all, Turner is a submariner, not an aviator. It is understandable that he would not know the specifics of the Cessna autopilot, and it is also understandable that Harm, sullen over his career being in Turner's hands, would not volunteer to explain during the preliminary investigation that just the Cessna snapping back on target for the oil terminal was proof enough that it was intended to hit the terminal.
Lastly, if I recall correctly, there was one scene that the USS Kennedy was 47 and another that it was 72. If I'm right, this would mean that those establishing shots are of the real life USS Philippine Sea, CV-47 (decommissioned in 1958) and the real life USS Abraham Lincoln, CVN-72 (which is still in service). Don't worry, I didn't go to Wikipedia for those bits of information, I went to www.navy.mil.
The episode: "Bridging the Gulf," from Season 10.
What happened: Harm investigates an aviator from the USS Kennedy who authorized his gunner to immobilize an Iraqi fisherman's boat that was approaching an oil terminal. Harm concludes Lt. Gutierrez (Randy Lewis Hernandez) was correct to stop the boat, but he soon himself finds himself having to make a similar decision: while getting his F-18 quals, he's diverted to the oil terminal and shoots a Cessna out of the sky before that plane can strike the oil terminal. The plane Harm shot down then turns out to have had an Iraqi dignitary on board. Turner comes aboard to investigate and Harm is grounded but continues his investigation ashore, aided by Col. Najjar (Andrew Divoff) of the Iraqi Army, leading to a climactic shoot-out in which the Iraqi fisherman (Ahmed Ahmed) seems to die and the body of the real Iraqi minister is found in the terrorists' lair. Now cleared, Harm resumes his carrier quals, while Turner escorts the Iraqi fisherman to America to rejoin his family, who were taken over there to put them out of the terrorists' reach.
What doesn't quite make sense: As Turner gets ready to board the COD back to America, the fisherman feels compelled to explain to Turner why he's alive: in order to make sure that the terrorists wouldn't menace the man's family as they made their way out of Iraq, the terrorists had to be made to think that he had died and that therefore there was no reason to go after his family. However, this explanation is really intended for the viewers. I mean, why would Turner care if the fisherman was dead or alive? Turner's investigation was on Harm for blowing up the Cessna, not on Gutierrez for incapacitating the fishing boat. Did the fisherman come aboard the Kennedy prior to the wire operation, or did Turner go ashore at some point that we were not apprised of?
If there is a character who needed that explanation is Col. Najjar, who saw the apparent death of the fisherman and almost avenged him by killing a terrorist he irately described as "the son of a syphalitic whore" (with such badly spelled subtitles, we can only assume the spoken Arabic is not much better). Harm, who seems to have been aware of the strategy, has to make Najjar back down.
While we're on the subject of onscreen text, in the end credits, the actor Nabeel is identified as an "Iraqi soldienr." Actually, there is a character that looks like a lowercase "m" with part of the rightmost line erased to make it look like an "r." In fact that would have worked if you started out with an "n" rather than an "m." To make a mistake like that in Final Cut Pro would actually be an accomplishment, because, as far as I can tell, there is no such character in Unicode.
And another thing: According to the IMDb, an FA-18 can't fly at the same speed as a Cessna, at least not the way they're shown in this episode: Although a Cessna's maximum speed is close to an FA-18's stall speed, "the FA-18 is not flying nose high with flaps extended (to maintain minimum airspeed)." Assuming that's correct, shooting down the Cessna may have been the only thing Harm could possibly have done under the circumstances.
The IMDb also says that Turner's theory "that the Cessna was on autopilot and returned to it programmed destination after Harm tipped it off course" is invalidated by the fact that a Cessna's autopilot function is for a course, not a destination, and thus if it was possible for Harm to nudge the Cessna away from its destination, the Cessna should not have snapped back on course for the oil terminal.
On that last point I'm willing to be a little more forgiving, for after all, Turner is a submariner, not an aviator. It is understandable that he would not know the specifics of the Cessna autopilot, and it is also understandable that Harm, sullen over his career being in Turner's hands, would not volunteer to explain during the preliminary investigation that just the Cessna snapping back on target for the oil terminal was proof enough that it was intended to hit the terminal.
Lastly, if I recall correctly, there was one scene that the USS Kennedy was 47 and another that it was 72. If I'm right, this would mean that those establishing shots are of the real life USS Philippine Sea, CV-47 (decommissioned in 1958) and the real life USS Abraham Lincoln, CVN-72 (which is still in service). Don't worry, I didn't go to Wikipedia for those bits of information, I went to www.navy.mil.
Friday, March 19, 2010
I've got swine fever
Last year, when it was declared that swine flu should be called "H1N1" instead, cynics were ready to say that the CDC had capitulated to the meat industry. I'll admit that I was among those cynics. However, a seemingly prescient Season 4 (2004 - 2005) episode of Scrubs reminded me that swine flu is nothing new and that technically it's more correct to say "2009 H1N1" than "swine flu."
When Clay Aiken guest-starred on the episode titled "My Life in Four Cameras" as a hospital cafeteria worker on the brink of getting a pink slip, the most recent health panic was over SARS. The episode begins with J. D., Turk and Carla at home, when they catch on TV the announcement of an E. coli outbreak, causing them to groan as they correctly foresee Sacred Heart Hospital will be overrun with TV-susceptible hypochondriacs. Dr. Cox asserts that many animal-named flus can only be obtained by fornicating with the animal the flu is named after. Swine flu is one of the flus Dr. Cox gives in his list.
When Clay Aiken guest-starred on the episode titled "My Life in Four Cameras" as a hospital cafeteria worker on the brink of getting a pink slip, the most recent health panic was over SARS. The episode begins with J. D., Turk and Carla at home, when they catch on TV the announcement of an E. coli outbreak, causing them to groan as they correctly foresee Sacred Heart Hospital will be overrun with TV-susceptible hypochondriacs. Dr. Cox asserts that many animal-named flus can only be obtained by fornicating with the animal the flu is named after. Swine flu is one of the flus Dr. Cox gives in his list.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
No gray on gay
Maybe the coming out odyssey of Betty's nephew on Ugly Betty is entirely realistic, for after all, given the still rather sparse presence of gay portrayals in our media (including even Broadway musicals written by gay librettists and set to music by gay composers), a young gay boy would first think that he's straight and even have crushes on girls. I know because I dated one such boy in high school.
And yet it seems to me like the writers are beating us over the head with excessively obvious hints that Justin Suarez (Mark Indelicato) is gay. In last week's episode, Marc (Michael Urie), playing a ridiculous pronoun game, got Justin to reveal the name of his acting class crush: Lily, a she. In this week's episode, however, we saw happen what the writers apparently think we couldn't see coming from a mile away: that the real object of Justin's desire in the love triangle is Austin (Ryan McGinniss), who didn't get to kiss Lily onstage but did backstage, and made sure Justin saw them. In the jealous confrontation between the boys that starts out heteronormatively enough, they kiss. It is as obvious to the viewers as it is surprising to the two characters, who had not even admitted to themselves their true orientation.
But let's not forget that straight and gay is not black and white. Whatever gay inclinations all of us have remain for most of us unacted upon to our deaths. However, prior to the new guidelines on homosexuality for the military, bisexuality was just as damning as homosexuality. With this in mind I watched on DVD an episode from JAG's tenth season, "Heart of Darkness." The main plot of that episode concerns the trial in an Islamic court of the "American warlord." In the subplot, Big Bud (Jeff MacKay) is recalled to active duty, something which he wants to avoid at all costs so that he may continue to run his bar and referee women's wrestling.
So Big Bud, after talking to his son the JAG lawyer, gets the idea of faking an addiction to meth. The female corpsman examining him medically sees right through this pretense. Frustrated, Bud claims he's gay and that he finds men attractive. So the woman gets the idea of whispering either sweet nothings or dirty talk in the man's ear (I wonder if female medical professionals in the military in real life would do that), and seeing the, ahem, tent, in the man's hospital gown, is convinced that she has completely foiled his attempt to avoid the recall by manipulating the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
For those of us who watched the show regularly, we know that Big Bud is very much straight, fitting some of the very worst stereotypes of the salty sailor. Therefore, it doesn't occur to us that Bud could be bisexual; whether out of necessity or legitimate desire doesn't actually matter under the military's policy. But it should occur to someone evaluating the fitness for duty of a given patient. All that the female corpsman proved with her performance is that Bud finds her attractive, it doesn't rule out that some man could arouse the same reaction from the subject. Though I suppose we could argue that it is the expression on Bud's face after the corpsman points out his 'tent' that really proves that he's in fact neither gay nor bi, an expression that says "Okay, you caught me in a lie."
And yet it seems to me like the writers are beating us over the head with excessively obvious hints that Justin Suarez (Mark Indelicato) is gay. In last week's episode, Marc (Michael Urie), playing a ridiculous pronoun game, got Justin to reveal the name of his acting class crush: Lily, a she. In this week's episode, however, we saw happen what the writers apparently think we couldn't see coming from a mile away: that the real object of Justin's desire in the love triangle is Austin (Ryan McGinniss), who didn't get to kiss Lily onstage but did backstage, and made sure Justin saw them. In the jealous confrontation between the boys that starts out heteronormatively enough, they kiss. It is as obvious to the viewers as it is surprising to the two characters, who had not even admitted to themselves their true orientation.
But let's not forget that straight and gay is not black and white. Whatever gay inclinations all of us have remain for most of us unacted upon to our deaths. However, prior to the new guidelines on homosexuality for the military, bisexuality was just as damning as homosexuality. With this in mind I watched on DVD an episode from JAG's tenth season, "Heart of Darkness." The main plot of that episode concerns the trial in an Islamic court of the "American warlord." In the subplot, Big Bud (Jeff MacKay) is recalled to active duty, something which he wants to avoid at all costs so that he may continue to run his bar and referee women's wrestling.
So Big Bud, after talking to his son the JAG lawyer, gets the idea of faking an addiction to meth. The female corpsman examining him medically sees right through this pretense. Frustrated, Bud claims he's gay and that he finds men attractive. So the woman gets the idea of whispering either sweet nothings or dirty talk in the man's ear (I wonder if female medical professionals in the military in real life would do that), and seeing the, ahem, tent, in the man's hospital gown, is convinced that she has completely foiled his attempt to avoid the recall by manipulating the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
For those of us who watched the show regularly, we know that Big Bud is very much straight, fitting some of the very worst stereotypes of the salty sailor. Therefore, it doesn't occur to us that Bud could be bisexual; whether out of necessity or legitimate desire doesn't actually matter under the military's policy. But it should occur to someone evaluating the fitness for duty of a given patient. All that the female corpsman proved with her performance is that Bud finds her attractive, it doesn't rule out that some man could arouse the same reaction from the subject. Though I suppose we could argue that it is the expression on Bud's face after the corpsman points out his 'tent' that really proves that he's in fact neither gay nor bi, an expression that says "Okay, you caught me in a lie."
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