Kablammo!
Smash all who hunger for destruction.... Confusion Song!
Literati’s Law of Averages
September 30, 2008As defined in Roger Ebert’s Movie Glossary, Literati’s Law of Averages states:
When any character in a movie is reading a book, the page he is reading always will be in the exact center of the book.
Seldom has there been a more egregious example of this law, assuming it can be extended to television as well, than in the following stills from The Sopranos.
First, we have a close-up of the book Carmen Soprano is reading: a real-estate sales exam study book, clearly open to the first page of chapter 1.
The very next shot is a reverse-angle shot, showing Carmen holding the book. It’s been clearly established that she’s just started the book (see the picture above), yet the book is open to its exact center. Maybe it just has an extremely long table of contents, introduction, foreword, and so on?
It’s made all the more infuriating by this counterexample from another Sopranos episode. AJ is reading A People’s History of the United States and finding out about Christopher Columbus’s wacky adventures in enslaving and genociding the Arawaks. This is recounted at the very beginning of the book, as it happens, and AJ’s book is opened to the very beginning.
I guess it’s a function of having different directors for different episodes, but it’s kind of annoying that they got it right once and got it horribly, horribly wrong another time. (And for the record, the real estate example was the horribly wrong one.)
On fire hydrants, again
September 15, 2008OK, I swear this is the last word on fire hydrants for the time being. I just couldn’t pass this up when I saw it outside an IKEA in Maryland on Saturday:
Look at the sky turn a hellfire red
September 12, 2008So I’m walking home last night when a couple fire-marshal vehicles zoom past me with their sirens blaring. Ok, that’s not unheard of. But then I notice the sound of several helicopters in the air, look up, and see a huge billow of smoke illuminated from below.
Once I reach my apartment, which I’m glad to see is not on fire, I grab my camera.
Thankfully, it turns out the fire hydrants in my neighborhood were turned on.
Jesus fuck.
September 11, 2008Are the fire hydrants in your neighborhood turned on?
He explains all the district’s hydrants, including those in Alexander Ranch, have had their water turned off since just after 9/11 – something a trade association spokesman tells us is common practice for rural systems.
“These hydrants need to be cut off in a way to prevent vandalism or any kind of terrorist activity, including something in the water lines,” Hodges said.
But Hodges says fire departments know, or should have known, the water valves can be turned back on with a tool.
. . .
The neighborhood association’s now working to get the tools in the hands of homeowners, as an extra precaution.
I can’t get over how absurd this is. I mean, come on.
H/t Bruce Schneier.
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