A Four-Base Error

The Dodger broadcasters were just describing this play. This is the 15th four-base error on record in Major League Baseball history.

It is the 1st of these that went over the wall.

(Note: The ball that went off of José Canseco's head was ruled a home run.)

"I Don't Want to be a Pie!"

The Improbable Research Blog has passed along a pie chart that tabulates (or perhaps 'pie-bulates'?) the various causes of death in Shakespeare's plays. (Being baked into a pie would have to suck.)

What Are We Waiting For?

At Peet's Coffee a day or two ago, I asked an old man if he was in line, as I didn't want to accidentally skip ahead of him.

He answered me that "No, I'm waiting for Godot."

So I responded in deadpan with "You're probably going to be waiting for a very long time."

He didn't answer. I hope he at least appreciated that I got the reference. (In retrospect, I think a Petty-themed "The waiting is the hardest part." would have been better, but timing is everything when it comes to wit.)

"Porter. Mason Porter."

Through a stray Google search during a spare few minutes, I found episode 16 of an audio drama called Action Science Theatre.

This episode contains a spy named "Mason Porter" and has three mathematics-related tags (math, maths, and catastrophe theory). The brief 'explanation' of catastrophe theory in the episode is ok but not quite right. It is amusing, though, that their brief discussion of catastrophe theory is reminiscent of the more science-fictiony aspects of catastrophe theory that were hyped for years. (In Vladimir Arnold's book on catastrophe theory, he has some very snarky things to say about that with respect to the work of René Thom.)

Here are few lines from this episode:



The character with my name, who is a spy who works for British Intelligence: "Let me introduce myself. [...ominous music...] Porter. Mason Porter."

Main character (the mathematician): "What? Really?"

"Me": "I'm sorry."

Mathematician: "Is that really your name?"

"Me": "Well of course it is. Why?"

Mathematician: "It just sounds a bit made up."



Hmpf. That's my real name --- so not exactly made up. Anyway, at least my namesake wasn't killed off in chapter 1 this time. (The link in my old blog entry is now dead. Perhaps that suggests that that book project might not be completed any time soon?)

Titles

Wow, Oxford Playhouse sure gives a lot of choices for what title I should use.

This is really difficult: I can't decide between "The Very Revere", "Crown Prince", and "Chief Constable"

Massive Media Roundup

Time for the long-promised set of massive media reviews, which will mostly be short and sweet. I kept the tickets so that I could actually remember what I saw. The order below is simply the order in which I pick up the ticket.

Hellboy II: Great movie! I approve. The German phastasm was amusing. Was the elven princess in Stardust? (Apparently not, but for some reason she seemed similar to me.)

The Wind in the Willows (theatrical version): I saw this at a small theatre and I enjoyed it very much. Now I finally understand where Disneyland's Mr. Toad's Wild Ride attraction comes from... Highly recommended!

Bugsy Malone: In this play, British teenagers (and sometimes younger) attempt to do gangster noir. It was very good overall, but it definitely didn't work at times.

Get Smart: I had been waiting for this film to come out ever since I first heard about it something like 2.5 years ago, given that I really enjoyed watching reruns of the original series as a kid. The casting was excellent! Steve Carrell was the obvious choice to play Maxwell Smart (Agent 86), although nobody will ever duplicate Don Adams in that roll (not even Inspector Gadget, who was based on Agent 86 and was voiced by a Don Adams sound-alike). Anne Hathaway did well as Agent 99, though the dynamics between Agents 86 and 99 in the movie were a bit different than in the show (where 99 was madly in love with 86, who was completely oblivious to the whole thing---at least at first; by the time of the failed return of the series, I believe the characters were married). Duane Johnson and Alan Arkin were also excellent. The film included several catch phrases (which I appreciated) and in general was quite good, even though I prefer the original series (which was a Mel Brooks creation, by the way, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I like it so much). Also, the shoe phone played a prominent role in the film. That was extremely important.

Hello Dolly (musical): Unfortunately, I was not very impressed, though I admit that it did have its moments. However, once I saw Wall-E, I became happy that I saw the musical given that it played an important role in that film. (The clips being shown in the movie were from Hello Dolly.)

Wall-E: Another excellent Pixar film. I'm shocked. It's amazing how they conveyed such emotion in the characters with so little dialog.

Kung Fu Panda: I really liked it! I tried unsuccessfully to get people to see it with me, but se la vie. They thought it would be silly---their loss. (Or maybe it's more precise to say that they assume that "silly" means not worth watching?)

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian: I enjoyed it, although I was a bit annoyed that they were hitting harder with the religious overtones in the film than they did in the prequel. The older daughter was a frosh (or "fresher", as it's called here) at Oxford last fall. I forgot which College.

The Pirates of Penzance: This was awesome! I recognized a very high percentage of the songs, which is not surprising given that many of the songs in there show up all over the place. I am the very model of a modern applied mathematician---or something like that. It could have been worse: I've been planning since I saw the musical (for the first time, amazingly enough) to write a parody of a certain song that I plan to call "Condensed Matter". Stay tuned...

The Forbidden Kingdom: I really liked this film as well. I could have done without the token white boy, but it didn't detract too much from what I actually paid to see (so I guess this is sort of like a milder version of AG's opinion on this point).

Oklahoma! (musical): This was a production by Oxford students that I saw at a small stage in Wadham College. I should have blogged about this earlier because then I could have mentioned that I ran into Lloyd alum Joe Jewell '04 (I think that's the right year), who was also in the audience. He will be starting as a grad turkey at Tech in the fall. I think he'll be in aeronautics. Oh, and the musical was really good! There was a recognizable vignette that I didn't realize came from this musical that I had seen parodied in a cartoon (I think in an episode of Bugs Bunny). There was also a very recognizable song ("Oh, what a beautiful morning") that I had no idea came from this musical.

Two Hobbit-Sized Parodies: Harry Potter and the Generic Adventure and Swords & Saucery: The second of these had a Lord of the Rings Theme. These plays were also performed by Oxford students and many audience members knew some or all of the people in the plays, so there was some audience participation at appropriate points. The Harry Potter parody was first. One of my friends played Snape, although I was already planning to go even before I found out about that. The guy who played Valdemort was booed lustily every time he came on "stage" (the performance was in the Wadham Gardens), including when he played a different character (a good guy) in the second parody. That was awesome! There were also lots of private jokes, and I even caught a couple of them. Think of these things as roughly like Lloyd movies, but as live performances. That was the basic ambience, which I liked very much.

Stuff at the Montreal film festival: I'm now wishing I could have gotten tickets for the new Woody Allen film (they sold out, so my debate whether I should go to that one versus having dinner at a normal time ended rather quickly) because I really want to see it and the UK is not presently listed in its IMDB entry as somewhere it's being released. Damnit! Satellites & Meteorites was an excellent Gondrey-esque film was an Irish director, who was there to answer our questions after the film ended. (A short film called The Ranger was shown before the main film. This was meh.) It was a bit rough around the edges and in a couple of situations could have been more subtle, but it is definitely on the short list of my favorite films of the year.) The Japanese film One Million Yen Girl was enjoyable, but it was merely good. Lissi and the Wild Emperor was a very funny German cartoon (with very high animation quality) which would probably get a PG-13 rating in the US. It made fun of Emperor Ferdinand. (For what it's worth, I picked the order randomly except for the ones at this film festival. I did these last on purpose.)

Alright, now I've finally caught up on one of the entries I had been meaning to write for a while.

Mort

This evening, I saw a play called Mort, which was adapted from the eponymous Terry Pratchett book. I have (obviously) heard of Discworld, but I have never actually read any of it. Nevertheless, the idea of a play based on stuff like that sounded appealing [and, interestingly, Tolkien's (great? great great?) granddaughter, an Oxford freshman, was in the play so there are other fantasy connections as well] and I was not disappointed. (It turns out that one of my perturbation methods students from last term was also in the play.)

I hadn't know about the play until I read a review of it in one of Oxford's student newspapers, and I was thankfully able to make it today (the last day). The author of the review seemed to find it mediocre, but I was intrigued by both the theme and his/her comments that the character of Death had a very dry sense of humor. That was more than enough to make me want to see it because I like that sort of thing. Sure enough, Death was awesome!

One thing this makes me want to do is read the book, but in looking at Mort's wikipedia entry, there appear to be three books that come before it. My question to the audience is first whether this is necessary for this particular book and second (independent of the answer to the first query) what you think of those three preceding books (as well as this one).

Three Plays

I recently had a three-week period in which I saw one play each weekend (in addition to other performances, which I'll discuss later).

The first was The Rivals, a play by Richard Sheridan. I previously read it in my 10th grade English class. (By the way, this play is where words like "malaprop" originated.) I saw some humor in reading it, but seeing it performed was unsurprisingly greatly superior. The Oxford student newspapers complained that the performance was "traditional," but I was quite pleased with that. I liked it a lot.

I then saw a very non-traditional theatrical version of Alice - Through the Looking Glass. It was enjoyable (and it worked, in spite of its unusual way of presenting things) and some of the ideas were very clever, but I think I would have preferred a traditional version. Also, I was disappointed by a absence of the Cheshire Cat, the absence of the caterpillar + bong, and the minimized role of the Mad Hatter.

Finally, I saw a version of Sheridan's A Trip to Scarbarough that seemed to be based pretty much on the 1982 revival version. It had a couple of very clever ideas, but unlike Alice this one pretty much failed to work. I was a bit disappointed overall.


During the third of those three weekends plus the following Monday, I also saw Alison Moyet in concert (more on that in another blog entry) and a stand-up comedian named Mark Watson (who was ok but nothing special).

Plays, Musicals, and Concerts for the new year

I found various early 2008 schedules for plays, musicals, and concerts in Oxford. Here is my slate of events thus far:


1/26/08: The Rivals

2/2/08: Alice - Through the Looking Glass

2/9/08: A Trip to Scarborough (by Sheridan, just like The Rivals --- this is apparently a modernized version that has iPods in it)

2/10/08: Alison Moyet

2/22/08: Nouvelle Vague

5/3/08: Fiddler on the Roof

5/24/08: The Pirates of Penzance

5/31/08: Hello, Dolly!



I'm hoping to see Van Morrison in March, but I haven't bought tickets yet because I want to keep that open in case I am coming back to the US at that time for Jing's wedding. (Once I find out when her wedding will be, I'll be able to figure out if I can make the Van Morrison concert.)

There weren't that many musicals, plays, or concerts I wanted to see this fall (and the only one I was actually able to make was Carmen), but thankfully there is a lot more stuff that I want to see in the spring. Time to immerse myself in culture! Additionally, the only one with a walk of more than 10 minutes from my home is the Nouvelle Vague concert! Having all this stuff so close to me is incredibly awesome!

Well of course he's awesome! Don't be ridiculous!

I suspect this title won't ring any bells with most of you, but when I was in elementary school, I occasionally watched a feel-good sitcom called Perfect Strangers, which really wasn't very funny and lasted far longer than it had any right to. One of the characters in the show was Myposian shepherd Balki Bartokomous, who was played by Bronson Pinchot.

In addition to the Mypos "dance of joy", the character Balki was known for certain expressions, such as "Well of course not! Don't be ridiculous!" (and variants thereof), which he uttered with a pretty good fake European accent.

About a week and a half ago, I saw a new play called "Distracted" that includes Pinchot as one of its stars. He played four different characters and also went meta- a couple times (actually, the play had a very healthy dose of meta-, which is one reason I liked it). His facility with accents came in handy.

I saw the play at the Mark Taper Forum. It's pretty funny, and Pinchot clearly stole the show. "I'm playing four characters! Without Ridalin, I couldn't even memorize my fucking lines!"

It's about ADHD, lots of input, and the issue of using meds to "raise" kids. As Number Johnny 5 once said, "Need input."

(Recent) Movies, Plays, and Musicals

OK, so this isn't exactly lawyers, guns, and money; but I'll take what I can get.


Let's start with 300, which is an extremely good movie. Here's Lemming's review. I don't think I liked it quite as much as he did, but I enjoyed it quite a bit and recommend it wholeheartedly. Lemming's review sums things up nicely, but let me add explicitly that the line "I don't see why we can't be civil about this." is (1) the best line in the film and (2) much better than the second best line. The delivery on that line was fantastic and both Lemming and I laughed hysterically when it was uttered. The rest of the dialog was hit-or-miss, but the storytelling and ambiance were the highlights here.

The other movie I saw recently in the theatre was Ghost Rider, which was exactly what was advertised. The movie was both good and fun (though I suspect others might call it "fun" but perhaps not good) but not excellent. The whole thing about pointing at someone and going "You -- guilty!" or "You -- innocent!" reminded me of recent discussions with colleagues about interviewing students and seeing clearly who was a scientist at heart and who was an engineer (despite the fact that --for the most part -- the students in question didn't really know). For what it's worth, "engineer" = "guilty" in terms of my recruitment of SURF students. (Note that an engineering major can be a scientist. I'm referring to the research mentality of the student.) Also, I was looking through some pictures recently and I found a really cool one from DragonCon that shows someone dressed up as Ghost Rider next to someone else dressed up as Beaker. Awesome!

There was also a recent string of movies that we saw on DVD. Crank got the wtf award. Who needs a plot when you can just have fun? (The movie was fun to watch but it wasn't exactly deep stuff.) Idiocracy was decent but not great. Watching it, however, did remind me that a pimp always goes after his hos. No exceptions. The Departed was awesome and Mark Wahlberg played a badass, which is probably the biggest compliment that one guy can give to another. (Technically, saying that someone is a badass is said biggest compliment.)

The play I saw recently was David Mamet's Oleanna. (There's a film version with William H. Macy that I have never seen.) I have enjoyed some of David Mamet's other work immensely (especially the film State and Main) and this one was decent, but it wasn't great. This one was basically pure drama; none of Mamet's hallmark witty dialog was present. While there was good stuff, the ending was extremely abrupt, and I left feeling that the play ended before the action did. By the way, I saw this play at the Hollywood Fight Club, whose stage has occasionally been graced by the wondrous presence of one Joshua Hime.

The musical I recently saw was My Fair Lady. I read Pygmalian in 10th grade but had never actually seen My Fair Lady before. A couple of the songs were familiar, and naturally I had seen a version of the story before. One of the CPA people with whom I went is from Great Britain and she claimed the accents were done well, so that's a good sign. And cockney is just fucking awesome as a general principle!

That's about it for recent media (aside from video games). I'm seeing another play on Friday and I'm playing lots of Zelda.

I've had it with these motherfucking strangers on this motherfucking train!

Back before this sort of title was hip, there was a film and a book called Strangers on a Train.

I just saw a play version of this tonight with fellow CPA theatre-goers.

It was good---mostly serious but with a few humerous moments thrown in (especially at the beginning). I could write more but I've been writing long entries lately, and I basically just wanted to make the gratuitous joke with the title and then go and do something else.