Well, not so much a 'review' as a testament that Rachel and I saw it last night and thought it was really good. Naturally, it's not the same kind of movie as the original (sequels so seldom are), but it's good in a different way. Strike out character development and use the saved time for more cameo in-jokes and oblique (and overt) movie, cultural, and fairy tale references.

The movie never lets the audience rest, but in a telling example, Rachel and I want to go see it again after a few weeks because we lost several lines because the audience was laughing too hard.

The soundtrack is also great. Any animated piece that has both "I need a hero" (sung by a fairy godmother) and "Funkytown" has gotta be worth a look-see.

Anyhow, today we're off to North Beach (San Francisco) with Ali and Mark to see if we can take so many pictures that we have to use my new Belkin iPod media adapter to drain the 1 gig card and fill it up again.

After that, we're all going to see Dido in concert at Berkeley High School. It should be a pretty full day.

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An MSNBC story today gives the author's thoughts on how Episode III should bridge the gap between I and II and the original trilogy. At the end of the article, the reporter asks how you would write the story, and save the series.

Here's my take:

Padme, realizing that the legislative battle against the Imperial senate is futile, turns toward more desperate measures to save her planet. Working with Darth Maul to position her world as a founding member of the new Empire, she turns Anakin toward his more powerful dark side, showing him that his true nature lies in fury, evidenced by the retributitive bloodbath he enacted after the killing of his mother.

Secretly gathering influences of her own throughout the Imperium, she masterminds the overthrow of the Imperial order.

Halfway through the movie it comes out that she has an extremely high, though inactive, latent midichlorean count herself, and deliberately sought out Annie more than a decade ago, in order to produce a child more powerful in the Force than any ever seen before him.

Kenobi, who discovers this duplicity as Amadala is birthing the twins are born, kills Amadala (in self defense, of course) and steals away the twins.

Anakin never knew Amadala was carrying twins, and so attempts to hunt down Kenobi on Corusant. To hide Leia's existence, Kenobi looks up his friends, the royal family of Alderaan, who are on the capitol planet for a State function, and convinces them to hide Leia and raise her as their own child.

Kenobi then flees and takes Luke with him to Tattoine, where he knows Vader's deep-rooted turmoil around the death of his mother will prevent him from sensing Luke's presence across the light years.

Despite the best efforts of the Jedi council, including a space battle where the Jedi Masters attempt to defeat a swarm of Clone-piloted Tie Fighters from their own hand-crafted ships (each reflecting that Master's character and physiology) they are eventually forced to sacrifice themselves to destroy a Jedi superweapon weilded by Duku, Vader, and Sidious. The resulting devastation leaves all dead except for Vader, Yoda, and Sidious.

Vader is so seriously wounded that Sidious has Vader's suit and helmet crafted to sustain him.

As Vader and Sidious continue their takeover of the Empire, Yoda retreats to Degobah, awaiting the eventual weakening of the new Empire, or the emergence of a new Jedi force.

Montage: Anakin/Vader at Padme/Amadala's grave, where he loses the last vestage of his humanity and his tears turn to a stone demeanor we are all familiar with.

Yoda, cleaning his old home and peering in (with Jedi sight) on Leia, now on her new home of Alderaan, presented to her people as an adoptive princess, and then on a newborn Luke, cared for by his aunt and uncle, who were presented with Luke by an intermediary, as Obi Wan looks on from afar.

R2 tweets at Obi Wan, who gazes into the Tatooine sunset and says "No, my little friend. It is just the beginning..."

Roll credits.

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For your filkification: Once More, With Hobbits.

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One of the best-written, informative fluff pieces I've read in ages, is this article about the necessity and tribulations of bathroom breaks during movies (especially Return of the King) in today's SF Gate (nee Chronicle).

excerpt: "While it may be no big tragedy to take a few minutes off from "The Green Mile," a bathroom break during "Return of the King" becomes a pisser of the highest order -- not unlike having to take out the trash in the middle of losing one's virginity."

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According to Metacritic, Return of the King is perfect, with the first 11 reviews from the New York Times, Herald Tribune, etc. all giving it 100 out of a possible 100 points, and consistantly saying it's the best movie of the trilogy.

I can't wait.

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Ever wonder how someone can hit a deer accidentally? Check out the onboard video of when a deer jumped in front of one of Maryland's finest (windows media).

For the other point of view, check out video snippets of life from animals' perspectives (flash and quicktime).

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Wow, I've actually been afraid to post here for a few days, what with all the tension and expectations! But this is just so cool, I had to break radio silence.

A week or so ago I commented on how I'm thinking about buying a utilikilt (argh, or was that on Blacksheep's blog?). Anyhow, Utilikilt is having a contest for user-created commercials, touting the advantages that a utilikilt offers.

My friend Rick and others went off a few weeks ago and made a commercial that got posted to the contest site yesterday. Check out "It Works". I think it rocks, and I really hope it wins.

Go Rick!

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Google's letting me free my mind for a couple hours tomorrow at Matrix Revolutions. Following up on last Spring's company-wide jaunt to see Matrix Reloaded, the whole company's going to the movies tomorrow to get a glimpse at the 'real world'.

I love my job just as much for taking me to the movies as for the fact that my work s so fun that I look forward to returning to my desk.

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For Friday Fun, don't miss the java-equipped Zombie Infection Simulation. For extra fun, go see 28 Days Later before or after.

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So I'm wearing my "Mars Attacks!" T-shirt today, in honor of Mars's closest approach in 60,000 years.

So far nobody at work has noticed, or at least they haven't said anything if they did... Drat!

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So last Tuesday Rachel and I went shopping for some stuff at the Murray St. Giant Eagle (fyi for the non-yinzers, pretty much all supermarkets around here are Giant Eagles). Walking down the sidewalk back toward the car, we heard this guy yelling, I mean really yelling, about two blocks away.

At first, I thought it was a fight in the making. I was reminded of one of the people I was most happy to leave behind in Berkeley, this guy who just roars incredibly loudly on Telegraph, encouraging others to try to roar as loudly as he does, at least three times a week for 7 years. Anyhow, as this guy got louder, I spotted him: a guy yelling in to his cellphone. I was just wating for him to break critical mass and fling the phone into a nearby building when, less than half a block away from us now, he yelled "OKAY! BYE!" and pressed the end-call button.

The wierd thing was that he wasn't mad at all. His phone conversation ended without a torrent of emotion, but still with a great deal of volume. It's hard to explain: He wasn't yelling in to the phone as though he was trying to make himself be heard through a faint connection, and he wasn't yelling (as it turned out once we could hear the context) in fury, but he was just yelling his words.

Rachel and I both looked at each other and talked the rest of the way to the car about how weird that was.

Today, walking down Walnut Avenue, Rachel and I heard someone yelling and, sure enough, here he comes down the street again, cellphone in hand on ear. In his wake he left a path of people turning to each other (even to nearby strangers) and whispering "what is that guy doing?" A few minutes later he'd turned around and passed by us on the sidewalk, still at full volume.

This time we were ready.

Keep in mind when watching this that the microphone in my camera is intended for close up use, and that to be heard when he's 20 feet away, and facing the opposite direction, he's actually a lot louder than implied in this clip.

Shopping in a nearby store, we heard him pace back and forth several more times over the next 20 minutes. Spectators speculated that he wasn't actually talking into the phone at all, and that his mock-tirade about multimillion dollar business deals was just a show. Me, I've seen a lot of crazy people who spout endless solliloquies off the cuff, and this guy seemed more natural than any of them, like he wasn't making anything up.

Still, just because there's actually someone on the other end of the phone doesn't make you any less of a freak. Thank god the guy sitting three rows behind us in X2 last night, whose phone went off five times during the movie wasn't such a loud talker, though even so, grrr.

The idea of picking up a cellphone jammer the next time I'm in Japan sounds more and more tempting...

Oh yeah, and I love my digital camera. Unexpected movies are the best.

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Well, two months in to the future anyhow...

Two differences between going to the movies in Los Angeles versus goin gto the movies anywhere else:

First, theaters are at least a couple years ahead in technology. Stadium seating was the norm for new theaters here at least a year or two before it caught on elsewhere, and new theaters here now have little demi-seats under the armrests so if you raise the armrest there's no gap between you and the person next to you, for extra comfort. Also, while early stadium seats would alternate row by row with armrests that raise up or seats that rock, the current theater seats all do both, and have plenty of legroom so you don't have to scoot to let someone through in front of you.

Second, if you go on a weekend evening, you're almost sure to see people with flyers eyeing the incoming moviegoers for people who fit their assigned demographic. They'll stop you and ask you almost apologetically if you have time on a weeknight this week to come to a free screening for an unreleased movie. sometimes they'll tell yuo the movei, sometimes they'll just give you the genre and a clue or two.

Karen, my mom, and I went to the Sherman Oaks Galleria to see The Hours on Saturday night, (Karen and I hadn't seen it yet), the night before the Oscars. The flyer people stopped us for two screenings. One, for a movie called "The Italian Job" was last night, and Karen and I went down to the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, literally a few hundred feet from the Kodak Theatre, where the Oscars were held just a few days earlier.

I'm not allowed to say anything about the movie, but it wasn't a disappointment, and they even gave everyone a free canole after the screening. I was surprised that they didn't give us all feedback forms after the screening, but i guess they just wanted to gauge overall audience reaction.

Tonight the three of us are returning to the Galleria for another screening, this time for a comedy starring 'a $20 million comedy star' and a current sitcom star. Karen and I are hoping that this equates to "Bruce Almighty" which makes sense, as Jim Carry got $20 million for Ace Ventura 2, and Jennifer aniston is also in the movie. It comes out in two months, the same week as The Italian Job, so it looks promising. I've wanted to see this movie since the first preview, so the idea of getting to see it two months early is supercool. A couple hours will tell.

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Got up when the girls got up this morning. They prepped to go to Dickens Fair, and I made ready for an afternoon shopping with Dawn in San Francisco.

Cousin Sara (and Ingrid and Heather) conspired this Christmas to organize presents, asking each of us to give them a list of five things we want. They compiled the list and send it back out to (all 20 of) us, so we can each pick a few things off of the list, coordinating with the self-appointed elves, so everyone gest what they want, and nobody feels like they have to get something for everyone (flashbacks to second grade valentines...)

I printed out the list and set forth for BART, where I would meet Dawn's train and we'd head into the city, where wind vied with rain, conspiring to create a sense of adventure, or at least dampness. Funny how outdoor bluster can make interiors (and company) shine like warm gold.

Driving back from Fruitvale BART, after seeing Dawn off, I was greeted by the sun, making its first appearance of the day. Grabbing my camcorder, I crossed the street from Karen and Crystal's to Alameda's Kings Beach, where I found today's moment of Zen (quicktime, 1.7 megs). This video completely exemplifies my day.

It's nice to be home...

In a bit I'm off to see Em, Chris, and Kisa. Kisa-kisa-kisa. I've so missed my kitty. I hope she remembers me.

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Wow. real-life blogging emotion can come from the most unexpected of places. After 25 years, I truly feel for Wesley, or rather, Wil Wheaton. After being snubbed at various reunion events, after being invited, then cut, from Star Trek Nemesis (he got the phone call from Rick Burman after his scenes were shot), now he's been surruptitiously excluded from the premiere.

Despite Wil's personal log (hah. He should call it 'personal log, stardate blah-de-blah') that's been running for over a year now, this post more than any other makes me see him as just another real person, fragile and hurt.

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Wow, okay, so I don't consider myself a cinema expert, but reading through this Nerve interview with Parker Posey on her latest film and her career in general, I was really surprised by the vividness of her real-world personality. I get the impression that she's a person first, and an actress second, but no less assertive for that.

On an orthogonal side of that die, fans of Apple's Switch campaign might be amused by the interview that Ellen Feiss finally granted to Brown University's student paper (after turning down Letterman and Leno). It turns out that she was on drugs (Benedryll), and sounds like she still is.

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This is interesting... Flexplay has developed a DVD that will 'expire' 8 hours after it comes into contact with air. [sorry for the nyt link. registration required]

At first I thought this was stupid, but then at first I thought it related to music CDs. Stupid because you would have all the more reason to mp3 encode it immediately upon purchase. But for DVDs, well, when a product enters the market, the public decides whether it will succeed, and where DivX failed (buy a disc with the rights to watch for 48 hours, then buy more rights to 'license' it permanently on a single DVD player), these 'self-destruct' discs might just work.

You see, I have problems with DVDs. I'll buy ones I like, and then rarely watch them. Sometimes I'll rent DVDs at Blockbuster, but that requires me to drive to Blockbuster, rent it, after giving Blockbuster all kinds of personal data they can use to bill me or track me, watch it within a day or two, and then go back there to return it, or face messy late fees.

Netflix is a little better, but then I'm paying a flat monthly fee, when some months I'll watch 8 movies, and other months I'll watch none.

What this new tech would probably do to the market is that DVDs would just be a commodity like groceries. If these single-use DVDs were comparable in price to a Blockbuster rental, I could pick up a couple copies of Lord of the Rings for later viewing at $2 or $3 each, and then buy the full Special Edition DVD when it comes out.

More importantly, I could go shopping for DVDs at the video store once every few months, and pick up all those films I know I want to see, without having to pay hundreds of dollars for permenant versions, or keep going back every week (and hope that the movie's in stock) to rent the one I want to watch that night.

Also, if I really like a film and I want all my friends to see it, I can buy a handful of copies and give them as gifts. At a sixth the price of a DVD, it's not such a grand gesture, or dent in the wallet.

Since the discs are cheap to make, this could also be a great viral marketing mechanism. When you buy a 'full' DVD, you might also get one or two 'single use' copies in there. This way, when I buy Amelie, because I love it so, I can get a few discs that I can give to friends, making me an instant Amelie evangelist. Those friends, if they love it as I do, might turn around and buy the full DVD, or at least a couple more single-use DVDs of their own, or for friends.

DVD-of-the-month-club also becomes a much more financially reasonable proposition.

Christmas would be much more fun if I didn't have to hope that my friend would like the DVD I chose for her, or pretend to like the one I got. When you can give someone a library of single-viewing experiences, you're more likely to make them happy, and it's easier to trade an inexpensive item with your friends for one you'd rather have.

Basically, you're buying, selling, giving, and trading movie tickets that you can redeem in your own home, the instant you open the airtight seal.

Especially when you consider how many portable devices use DVDs (computers, protable players, card, etc.), the idea of being able to 'rent' a DVD that you never have to return or pay late fees on, and can wait as long as you want before using, looks like exactly what's needed.

Despite the instant reaction to any sort of digital rights management technology, I actually think this is way cool, and could completely change people's spending habits on DVDs.

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Things not to do, item 1505:

Don't go see the midnight showing of The Ring and then drive home alone to park in front of your private cemetery, climb up to your solitary attic and go to sleep.

Unless, of course, you're me.

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While writing the previous post, Ammy and I had Apollo 13 on cable in the background.

Watching, while Ammy was composing, one of the astronaut's wives was dismayed when she found that her husband's live (pre-accident) television broadcast from the capsule wasn't being picked up by any of the networks. The newsman replied: "Nowadays a moon-shot is passe. You guys make a trip to the moon as exciting as a trip to Pittsburgh."

Ouch! Let's just hope our capsule doesn't blow up.

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I've been wrestling with a moral dilemma for the last several days, tying me up in little knots, getting to the core of who I am both personally and professionally.

At last week's Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs announce the .mac ('dot-mac') initiative, essentially taking the functionality of iTools, adding a few other features, and packaging it as a $100/yr subscription package.

There's some nice functionality in it, but at the same time they're also discontinuing iTools itself. Hundreds of thousands of Apple users who have been using the service, and using their mac.com email addresses will now lose those addresses unless they agree to pay $100 a year. There is no free version, and there is no announced forwarding policy.

As a user experience designer, this irritates me to no end. An Apple executive has been quoted in a News.com article as saying they anticipate that only 10% of the users will actually migrate to the paid service, meaning that 90% will lose their email addresses. Permanently.

Having worked at Yahoo for the last year, I'm no stranger to the push for subscription-based premium services, but Yahoo and most companies that are still in business have done it right: Charge for enhanced services and new services. when you can't do that, charge for those services which were free but are still ancillary, like POP mail access, but don't take a free service and tell your users 'tough. Fish or cut bait.'

So what did I do? I made a commercial. In the 'switch' style, but using no Apple logos or implied consent, I voiced my own opinion on Apple's new policy, and frankly I'm pretty proud of the result.

And herein lies the problem: Once I finish my HCI masters at Carnegie Mellon next year, Apple is very high on the list of companies where I would like to work. Knowing that a video/protest like this could come back to haunt me, I decided to make a pixelated version, hoping to obscure my identity. Still, I couldn't post it here, as people who know me personally would still recognize me and the cat would be out of the bag.

I showed the video to a lot of friends, and received positive feedback, but still I was torn:

When user experience design is my vocation, not just my job, what do I do when doing the right thing from a user experience perspective (on behalf of Mac users everywhere, my constituency in this case) can endanger my chances of getting a job as an experience and interface designer at the very company whose policies I'm calling into question?

Very frustrating indeed, but after a few days I have finally decided that if Apple wouldn't hire me because I stood up for the users in opposition to an Apple policy while I wasn't in their employ, then it's not a place I would want to work in the first place. As I mentioned to one of my former Yahoo coworkers: Yahoo would have hired me even if I was a vocal opponent of a Yahoo business practice before starting there, and I wouldn't want to work someplace less cool than yahoo. Let's hope that the people within Apple are more circumspect than Apple-the-company's recent business decisions.

So, without further ado, I give you:

Bait and Switch

The Star Trek: Nemesis trailer posted to Apple's website today.

There's no real plotline revealed, but the effects look like Star Trek effects have finally caught up to the present.

Oh yeah, and I didn't see Wesley in it, but it loks like Lore has a role.

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Do you know who's playing Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter II? Kenneth Branagh! That's... odd. Also, he's on the short list of directors for Harry Potter III.

Just so long as he doesn't make it 4 hours long, with an intermission preceeded by Ronald Weasley delivering a dramatic (yet still laughable) St. Crispins Day speech on a glen.

Also, it seems that HP III: Azkaban is set for 2004, which means there would be a one-year gap in the storytelling...

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This thread on Slashdot, regarding Yoda's linguistics (which, fair warning, I partook in) really cracks me up.

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Wow. The Case for the Empire is a really well thought out article on Star Wars Imperial politics, how wars are rarely battles between good and evil, even if the 'good' try to make it look that way, and how possible it is that Vader's Empire existed for the true greater good.

I have a few contradictions that I'd add into the mix (hopefully they'll be resolved in Episode III), but this article inspires me to write an analysis of 'the story so far' instead of just the movie.

Could it be that Lucas is actually on a 30 year journey into making us question our whole moral compass? After Episode III, will we watch the original trilogy through eyes so different that we're cheering for the other guy?

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Not as bad as The Phantom Menace. Depending on my interpretation of one variable, it was possibly better than Jedi. I'll have a better opinion after I see it again, which will be in a whopping 9 hours (work is going to a matinee)...

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So in preparation for seeing Attack of the Clones tonight at midnight (Van Ness, analog, for reasons I may explain later), I unwrapped my Christmas copy of The Phantom Menace DVD and watched it on Sunday.

When I saw that Star Wars, three years ago, again at a midnight premiere, I realized it had to be great to be able to live up to the Star Wars saga, and that it fell short of the Star Wars standard.

What didn't hit me until I saw it on Sunday (for the first time in nearly three years) is that The Phantom Menace wasn't a bad Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace was a bad movie. Period.

The fact that it was a Star Wars movie was the only thing saving it, and the only reason it garnered $400M on US screens. Of course, we all remember that Jar-jar was out of place, but the underlying racial caricatures, both exemplified by Jar-jar's Jamacian bumbling and the 'Trade Federation' leaders bad Chinese Chop-Fooey dubbed accents, are particularly offensive.

Anakin's first 'Yippee!' should have got him shot. His second should have got the guns trained on the editors. New Star Wars truism: Where there's a rampart, a Jedi's gonna die.

The film was stupid, and insulted our intelligence. A 'planetary blockade' consists of about 20 ships in close proxiity, without any explnation of how they would prevent a ship that chose to leave through the planet's back door? A robot army of thousands that still have humanoid shapes and limitations, use human weapons, talk to each other out loud yet are all apparently thin clients, shut down when a single 'droid command ship' is destroyed?

Why did the trade federation want to take over the backwater planet of Naboo anyhow? If it's a set-up for II and III, fine, but unless the other characters are in on the secret, they shouldn't go around like it makes perfect sense.

Village Voice reviewer Michael Atkinson put my frustrations into cogent prose best when he wrote:

There is an odd cognitive dissonance at work between the obvious ingenuity dedicated to the film's visual details -- alien anatomies, industrial machinery, technological minutiae -- and the retarded intelligence quotient evident in its content.

The only problem is that this was from Atkinson's review of Episode II. Arg.

Okay, venting done. If Episode I was just setting up dominos, then II should be good if for no other reason than to excuse some of the stupidity of I.

Now that so much of Star Wars takes place in the political realm, Lucas should really bring on Sorkin as a co-writer.

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A friend of mine directed me to this absurd petition today.

I felt it was my duty to respond in kind.

Let sanity prevail. Spread the word.

(and though I'd never self-post to MetaFilter, if someone else wants to, I'd consider it a fine idea.)

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Before Saturday morning arrived I had done a lot of research on the web. I wanted to know how things go wrong up there, how often, and what I could expect. Ironically, I wanted to make myself more comfortable by being fully informed of the realities, instead of relying on blind trust and assurances.

For example, one of the commonly used skydiving platitudes is that you have a greater chance of getting killed driving to or from the drop zone than skydiving once you're there. This actually isn't quite right. There are nearly 2 million jumps a year in the US, resulting in about 23 deaths a year, or one fatality for every 86,000 jumps. By comparison, there are 0.47 driving fatalities for every million driving hours, equating to one chance in a million of a driving fatality for a typical two-hour journey. Since the Byron drop zone was an hour away, that means the chances of a fatal accident on the trip there or back were roughly one-twelfth that of during the 7 minutes I'd be in freefall or under canopy.

Another way of looking at it is that a single jump is about as dangerous as 24 hours of driving time (not continuous, of course). That way doesn't sound so bad.

Driving to pick up Karen, who had graciously volunteered to come along to keep me company, provide support, and be my cameraman, I reminded myself that tandem instructors are among the most experienced, professional, and risk-avoiding bunch of the lot, and that though there are roughly 140,000 tandem jumps a year, a tandem crash only happens every 2 or 3 years, pushing the stats for my particular jump farther to the safer side.

But enough with the statistics.

I went out there Saturday to watch people skydive. I was willing to pay the $160 jump-fee to learn about the process, gather all the information I could, and back out in favor of a rain-check coupon before I got on the plane. I wanted to see people get in a plane. From the ground, I wanted to see them pull their chutes, navigate, and land. 'Normal, everyday skydiving' doesn't get much press. The average joe only experiences the media of skydiving when there's an accident, or when people are performing extreme maneuvers for the camera. Stories like "last Saturday, 18,230 jumps were made with no serious injuries, one broken leg, and 14 sprained ankles" never make it into the paper. It's just not news.

So Karen and I followed the directions, through the Altamont Pass, past the windmills, by the abandoned train tracks and the cows, and arrived at Bay Area Skydiving just before 9 am.

Jumping right into things, I was given a clipboard with two waivers, one absolving the skydiving company, and the other for the equipment manufacturer. These waivers were the most complete I'd ever read, not only saying I promise not to sue, but that they were not to blame even in the case of gross negligence, that I had provided financially for my dependents in the event of my death, that if I or my dependents should attempt to sue, they are simultaneously agreeing to a $25,000 fine for doing so, and that, in the event that I or they did sue and won, I or my beneficiaries would be entirely responsible for paying the settlement to ourselves, as well as the legal fees for all parties. They weren't kidding around.

Also, I and my friends from work were set down to watch an instructional video, explaining the risks of skydiving, and reiterating the finer points of the waiver. The man behind the desk in the video looked like a ZZ-top understudy, and his words were so wooden and eerie that I half expected his translator to cut out and he would start saying "Ack! AckACKack. AckACK!" in true 'Mars Attacks!' fashion.

Reading each clause and initialing them, I told myself it didn't really matter because I wasn't jumping out of a plane today anyhow. They checked that I initialled and signed everywhere I was supposed to, took my money, and put my name on the tandem list. It would be another couple hours before I was called up.

The first load of the day was just getting underway, so Karen and I went outside to watch the landings. I figured this would make me more comfortable. I wasn't actually scared at this point, because I wasn't actually going to jump. This acceptance of backing out freed me from anxiety the whole morning. I wasn't scared because if I got scared I could back out, so there was no point being scared yet. I don't know if that makes sense on paper, but it's clear in my head.

Watching landings is great. You get a real respect for the control these people have, and how far parachuting has come from the days of circular canopies and landings equivalent to jumps from ten-foot walls.

Two things that Byron had in abundance on Saturday were sunshine and pollen. I'd been fighting an allergy attack for the past several days, and this new assault was easily too much for my own defenses. From the time I arrived my nose was runny, but walking out of the hangar and into the sunlight, staring up at the sky, sneeze followed sneeze, sometimes as many as 12 sneezes in a minute. There was no kleenex to be had, so I made frequent trips to the port-a-potty to get toilet paper for my nose (port-a-potty toilet paper is closer to sandpaper than a kleenex, an unfortunate reality that led to my nose still being sore and dry two days later).

Soon enough they gathered up all the tandem jumpers to go over exit procedures, including how to waddle to the door of the plane with an instructor strapped to your back, how to tilt your head back once at the door, to prevent knocking heads with the instructor upon exiting the plane, how to cross your hands on your chest, specifically to not hold on to the door. That's the instructor's job.

We were told how to position our hands and arms out once we were in free fall, how to 'kick the instructors butt' upon exiting the plane, to get our legs in the proper position for a controlled dive position. We were shown the signals that the instructor might give, tapping our shoulder to remind us to keep our arms out, tapping our thigh to get us to kick back farther. Between the exit door and the canopy deployment there would be no words, because 125mph doesn't lend itself to conversation.

All these instructions would be given to us again by our individual tandem instructors, we were told, but it was good to go through it once first, so we'd remember.

Then there was more waiting. My allergies were really killing me now. an endlessly running nose has been joined by itchy, watery eyes that just wouldn't quit. I'd stand inside the hangar to watch landings now, because a little less sunlight helped to stop the sneezefest my sinuses had become.

Liz, one of my co-workers, and the person whose bravery I was hoping to latch on to (we're both in it together. We'll make each other do this), was called up. Her instructor, Richard, ran her through the procedure again, as she was suiting up. Richard clearly knew what he was doing, and Liz didn't seem too worried about the adventure to come (or so I thought, until Richard told me later how worried she was once they got in the plane ;-) ).

We watched Liz's plane take off, and about ten minutes later, watched her and Richard's descent and landing. Coming back from the landing field, Liz was relaxed and happy. Now I'd not only seen people jumping and landing, I'd seen a friend go through what I was still on the edge of doing, with similar fears, and coming out of it happy (and, of course, alive).

More sneezing, trips for tissues, and watching landings, and my name was called up, along with a few others. I went into the hangar, met up with my assigned instructor, who turned out to be Richard! Sniffling and blowing my nose, I suited up and Richard and I went through the procedure again. I'd paid for video and stills as well, so from this point I also had a camera guy (I never did catch his name!) who added a second reel of clips to the one Karen and I were compiling with my camera.

The jumpsuit (hah, a real 'jump'-suit! Hence the name) had a small pocket on the left bicep with an elastic opening. It was just perfect for me to stuff in a small spool of toilet paper, and I could pull it through the opening, tearing off as much as needed, for blowing my nose. I thought to myself 'if god is the one who makes the next tissue come up, then I guess god is with me in this jumpsuit.' wiping an already raw nose, I wondered if the pollen-free air far above the ground would give me a respite from the allergies.

Strapped into the four-point harness that would hold me to Richard (and, by extension, the parachute) I was shown how to adjust the leg straps once we were under canopy, lifting my legs and pulling the straps down to make a seat instead of a groin swing.

Then it was time to walk to the plane. The plane's door is in the back, and so the first out the door climb in last. Tandems are the last to jump, presumably because they need more time (or because if they chicken out, singles don't have to get past them), and as the biggest tandem, we went into the plane first. Richard and I, facing backwards, were right next to the pilot.

The rest, two tandem pairs and a handful of singles, pile into the plane, making a tight squeeze in two rows straddling long padded benches. They slide closed the plexiglass door, fire up the engines, taxi down the runway and take off.

I've been in a lot of small planes before, so I wasn't too worried about this one, though I was idly amused that, after hearing so many quips about 'jumping out of a perfectly good airplane' I couldn't help but notice that the plane's pilot, along with everyone else, was wearing a parachute of her own. Perfectly good plane, my ass.

I could see the large-faced wrist-altimeter of the jumper in front of me, and I watched as its needle rose above 3,000 feet, 4,000 feet, and higher. Richard attached the four harness points to his harness, and we spent a few minutes tightening the leg straps securely, working together to pull them to their tightest. Richard told me I ought to put my goggles on now. Then it was back to looking out the window or altimeter-watching. I was a little impatient to leave the crowded plane and get this show on the road. I was ready.

Soon we were at 14,000 feet and were in position. The first jumper slid up the plexiglass screen and quickly, without fanfare or pause, was out the door. Richard joked that 'oh my god he fell out!' but I was already calm, and a little detached. I had a thing to do and it was just about time to do it. Looking back on it, I suppose the right word for my state of mind was 'detached' (not that I'd want to use that word anywhere near a drop zone..).

It was only a few more seconds before we were scootching down the bar, stooping up and waddling to the back of the plane and the door. I looked down and I could see the airstrip. I noticed how close the windmill farm, which looked so far away from the ground, seemed to the strip from this height. I couldn't see my car. The parking lot was a speck. Then I was outside the plane, with Richard still inside. I crossed my arms, tilted my head back, and waited. For the briefest of moments, a part of me mentioned that this is the point when I should be jibbering in fear. "Um, lets' not do that" I said to myself, and wondered why we weren't falling yet, and then we were.

Falling, I kicked back and put my arms out. My mouth and nose inflated under 125mph of force. We were falling, it was a blast. It didn't feel like falling, or flying, and certainly not floating. When you're that far off the ground, you don't see it getting bigger unless you watch carefully. Instead, it seems like you're in this stationary place, with wind just blowing really, really hard.

Breathing is weird up there. Taking a breath is like taking a drink from a firehose. Instead of sucking air in to take a breath, it's like not pushing air out quite as hard, letting it push its way in. I macked for the camera a bit, giving thumbs up, and when the camera-guy mocked picking his nose at me I was suddenly worried that I had a stream of snot or something just as glamorous going on, so I mock-picked back at him, not realizing 'till later just how silly this would look, seeing only my side of it, on the eventual tape.

Too soon it was canopy time, and I was almost worried that there wasn't a sudden jerk. There was a pull which brought us into a vertical orientation, from the horizontal, and a pul that kept on pulling, more than a single gravity, but not the force that seemed necessary to bring us from 125mph down to 10mph vertical descent.

Ow, that harness is pretty tight around the areas I'd really rather not have so tight. I waited for Richard to tell me it was okay to adjust my straps. After a few seconds he gave the okay and I brought my leg up to my chest to reach under and try to bring the strap forward. My hands and fingers were numb. I hadn't realized just how cold it was up there, but when I couldn't feel my fingertips I clued in. Still, I needed to move the straps and I could tell when my hands were in the right place so I gave my fingers and hands their marching orders, and though I couldn't feel my hands they did their work. First one leg, then the other. Ahh.

Richard let me take the toggles (handles) while he held them higher up, so we could try a few gentle turns, and a couple tighter ones. It wasn't the roller-coaster ride I'd have expected, because while a roller coaster gives most of its thrill from pushing your body where Newton's laws wouldn't have it go, when you're under canopy making a tight turn, down always feels like the opposite of the canopy, even when it's 45 degrees off of vertical. Lots of fun. We practiced landing, with me lifting the toggles as high as I could, then bringing them all the way down to my legs, creating a momentary stall that, at ground level, would bring our vertical velocity to nearly nothing.

"Don't try to stay standing" was one of the thing they pushed in the ground school. Especially guys. We feel the need to be macho, and forget that, in addition to falling out of the sky, our harness means that we'll be carrying both our weight and our instructor's weight, as the instructor is about 8 inches higher up in the harness. "Lift your legs forward" is the instruction we were given, and that's what I did. As we got closer to the ground, we leveled off, pulled the toggles down as far as possible, and slid easily into home. Seconds later I was unhooked and on my own two feet.

Karen and I stuck around for a couple hours as they dubbed the tape and, at my request, made me a DV copy of the digital master for my own iMovie fun. That digital source, along with footage Karen and I shot with my camera, is where all this video came from.

...

So you might be wondering: "What happened? You were going to bail out, you were worried, and then, what? You're in the air and out the door?" Well, It might seem like a cop-out answer, but simply, yes. I think it was the allergies. I was so distracted with the nose that wouldn't quit. I had so much to occupy my mind that the paranoia and fear of the door, falling, all of it, never came into play.

I'll get shakes sometimes, before and after bungie jumping being a good example. I could put my hand out and see the shaking. Public speaking can do that to me too. Heck, even when I call in on a radio show and I'm on the air, I'm a little shaky. But here, in the plane, in the air, back on the ground, nothing. I didn't have that searing squinch of a squeezed adrenal gland, pumping fear and energy into my body. I enjoyed every second of the experience, and I'll probably do it again if the opportunity arises and the time is right, though I'm considering an AFF program (solo, and a full day of ground training).

Karen said she'd consider jumping next time, as long as she doesn't have a trip planned shortly afterwards (she's going to Thailand, and doesn't want to hobble on a sprained ankle).

Me, I'm just amazed at the power of a little pollen...

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Oh god this stuff is great. Last week I commented about the greatness of smalltime video on the web, and even posted a couple quicktimes of my own, but the folks at Ingredient X have got the art down to a science. Everything I've seen there so far is great, but the one that's stolen my heart for the evening is "You Buy Stuff."

Anyone else have a favorite?

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Just as I'd hoped, the video age is starting to hit its blogger stride.

Witness:

Derek's effigic threat to Ben Brown.

Be amazed amused by:

Ben Brown's retort.

God, but weekends with video cameras are great.

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So someone (at ain't-it-cool-news, no less) got a sneak peek at Attack of the Clones when he was at SXSW last week. His review, though spoiler laden, is really promising. After getting the gist I stopped reading for fear of getting more than I wanted to, but I'm a little more excited to see this film again, which is good, since it'll be in theaters in a scant two months!

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In Star Wars IV through VI, I was Luke Skywalker, fighting for his past and his future at the same time, up against evil and incredible odds and emerging victorious at great expense.

In the Matrix I was Neo, someone who believed there was more to the world than we were aware of, given the chance to see behind the curtain, and discovering that I was the only person who might be able to rip that curtain down.

In Fellowship of the Rings I was Frodo, on an unasked for quest to save the world and all that is good.

In Star Wars: Phantom Menace I was.. who? Princess Amadala? No. Obi Wan, or Qui Jan? Unh unh. Anakin? Certainly not. Jar-jar? Ugh.

Ep One wasn't about a personal struggle or a quest. It was an ensemble action flick with pretty CGI. Who am I supposed to bond with, to put myself behind and see their own troubles as my own? Who am I really supposed to get close to?

Maybe Attack of the Clones will be better. Maybe Anakin is old enough now that I can relate to him. Maybe we see through his eyes enough that we feel it's his story. Maybe there's gonads and strife. Maybe there's valor born of both necessity and despair.

As any Smallville watcher will tell you, we have to love Anakin before we can hate Vader.

Maybe Anakin will do what he does because it's what has to be done.

Somehow I doubt it though. The previews don't paint Anakin as particularly humble, a quality that Frodo, Luke, and Neo all shared. What will Episode II contain to make me proud of Anakin? What will make him worthy of my suspension of not just disbelief, but sense of self, to let me put my being into his?

Dear Attack, Please don't suck.

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Last week I was sifting through IMDB and found that one of my favorite movies (albeit made for TV (err HBO)), The Worst Witch, shares a lead actress with The Craft.

Fairuza Balk, as twelve-year-old Mildred Hubble (truly the pregenitor to Harry Potter) could not be more different than her decade-later Craft character Nancy Downs, psycho goth toes-dragging-on-the-ground power bwitch.

That would make a kick-ass double-feature.

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The third Austin Powers movie can't, at least for the time being, be referred to as "Austin Powers, in Goldmember" because of a dispute with MGM, holders of the James Bond franchise.

If they end up having to ditch the name, you can be sure they'll come up with something fitting, like "Austin Powers in MGM sucks and can't appreciate a parody."

Err, that's 'goldmember' not 'goldfinger.' I fixed it above. (I guess it is confusing!) Thanks, Em!

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So I saw A Beautiful Mind this weekend and loved it. Nevertheless, despite the four golden globes it picked up tonight, I'm ecstatic that Moulin Rouge got three of its own.

In a year with a number of great movies (the aforementioned, Shrek, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Memento), and no absolute standouts, the Golden Globes are an important preview for the Oscars. It looks like A Beautiful Mind and Moulin Rouge are shoe-ins for the Best Picture nomination. Let's just hope M-R doesn't get stiffed in the other categories (I can't wait to see whether M-R or LotR:FotR gets best costumes).

Oh, and I couldn't possibly forget Amelie.

Basically, more than any other year, 2001 was the year of movies whose DVDs I want to buy in 2002. That is, if I don't already have them.

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Moment of self-pity for my Saturday:

• My Saturday movie plans were thrown to the wind when the friend I'd hoped to see suddenly skipped town to go skiing.
• My Sunday movie plans were tweaked when another two friends 'thelma-and-louised' to places unknown to get away from the world, leaving only a note saying they'd be back when they were back.
• Another couple friends who said they'd visit and play never showed up, probably figuring they'd see me at the 30th birthday party for another friend at Stanford that evening, the drive for which, sadly, I didn't really feel up for after all of the aforementioned.
• Two other friends let me know they'd rather not spend time with me for a few weeks because, within our 'urban tribe' of four, I had dated two within four months. This is the one that really vexes me, but all involved are bloggers, and so this probably isn't the best place to air frustrations... It suffices to say that, as bloggers, I thought they would be better at communicating feelings. Disillusionment has a bitter taste.
• But then, I wasn't attending my grandfather's funeral, as Dinah was, so things could have been a lot worse.

The upside is that, at least for me, despondency is the mother of industry, and I got a lot of good programming done on Fury, enough, you might note, to warrant a bump in the version number. Yes, Fury is now at version 3.2.

My Sunday turned out a lot better than Saturday. I got pulled out of bed at 9 by Ali (not literally; she called me when she was done with rowing (Rowing at 7am? It's Sunday!) and we got Chai, walked on campus and caught up on each others lives. Going on 22 years, my friendship with Ali is my oldest, and talking life stuff through with her always gives me a good perspective.

Emily, Chris and I went to see Beauty and the Beast in IMAX at the Metreon. God Disney musicals can rock. (Note: Lion King is coming to IMAX on January 1, 2003. What's with the annularized movie releases? Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars (okay, biannual), and now Disney IMAX re-releases... Are movies franchises the new holidays? November 17 is 'Harry Potter Day'? Well, for the next six years, anyhow.)

Karen and Crystal (thelma and louise) came back in the afternoon, after a theraputic run down to Gold Country and wine tasting.

Another evening at home, coding, catching up on TiVo, talking to Dinah.

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N'Sync cameo scene dropped from Star Wars: Episode II, reportedly because fans at TheForce.net raised such a stink.

How many fans will it take to edit out Jar-Jar?

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Okay, so I'm zipping through the last 60 pages of the Fellowship of the Ring so I'll finish it before seeing the movie. I know it's playing in a few theaters at midnight tonight but I don't know if I'll actually see it. Aside from tickets being difficult to come by, it's over 3 hours long (including previews) and I have to work in the morning. Bah.

So 90% of the reviews out so far have been raving about how great it is, particularly in how closely it follows the novel. But I don't get it.

The last commercial I saw talked about 'epic love' and, reading the book, unless they're talking about the love Sam has for his 'master' Frodo, I don't have any idea what they're talking about. Love is not any part of this story. In fact, the story is all about the company of men, and not in that kind of way either.

To put it another way: Hobbits have a way of making Arthur Dent seem randy.

So are the ads just being deceptive? Are reviews being written by journalists who couldn't make it past the first admittedly slow 40 pages, and don't want to admit it? Or do the last 60 pages consist largely of orgiastic revelry to counter the previous 400 pages of not?

Time will tell (and, I suppose, sex will sell).

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Tom Green filed a Superior Court divorce petition Monday morning, citing "irreconcilable differences" with his spouse, Drew Barrymore.

Now I don't think the movie was that bad, but even so, you probably should have watched it before you married her, Tom.

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There's a new Attack of the Clones trailer, 'Forbidden Love,' up tonight at Apple.com. Presumably this is the trailer that's spliced in front of Harry Potter.

I don't want to spoil it for anyone who wants to see it in the theater, but I can say that it has more meat than the teaser trailer, 'Breathing.'

I can't speak to the members-only trailer, 'Mystery,' because I don't have a password, or a copy of the Ep I DVD needed in order to get a password.

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Time-lapse driving movies is a project I've wanted to do for a while. It's nice to see I'm not the only one. I actually tried it once, seven years ago, with an original QuickCam and a Powerbook Duo, but the duo fell off the dash and froze, and that ended that project.

Now if I could tie that into data recorded by my new GPS receiver, I could get a nice little data-montage of location, speed, and video. Oh for that land of days without end...

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Some really funny stuff, compliments of everyone else (and brought to my attention through Blogdex):

• You Are Special - Special as a tuna fish sandwich
• Celebrities without makeup - Just like us
• The Invisible Library - Fictional fiction
• Reverse-engineered Iron Chef Recipies - This is probably like trying to learn Kung-Fu by watching Jet Li.
  And let's not forget...
• Iron Chefs USA Weird flashes of Street Fighter 2, but with Cap'n Kirk, Las Vegas, and food.

In other news, our group at work is seeing the 11:30am showing of Monsters, Inc. (and I'm seeing it again at 8 with friends!) The Star Wars: Episode II (Bring in the Clones) teaser trailer is tacked on to the beginning of the movie, so I'll be able to give a brief report on that. Don't worry, no spoilers, but maybe a New Hope (unless the rumors are true and Jar Jar was impregnated by one of the Ewok delegates and he's actually pregnant with Chewbacca...)

Happy Friday, everyone!

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After an off-camera fling with an Ewok during the pod-races, it turns out that Jar-Jar is actually pregnant.

A good portion of the side-story deals with throwing out names for the new fuzzy cast member, finally settling on Chewie, because of his oral fixation.

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What would Douglas Adams think?

Before, and After...

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No, I'm not talking about Brad's initiative, worthy though it is.

Wednesday is my day without weblogs. I may write, but I will not read.

It's not a protest.

It's not a statement.

It's a necessity.

You see, Buffy's much anticipated season premiere aired tonight. I mistakenly thought Gilmore Girls was supposed to have its season premiere tonight, overlapping Buffy, but I was mistaken. Before I realized my error, I made plans to watch Gilmore Girls alone tonight, and head to Emily's tomorrow to watch Buffy. (Emily's TiVo was saving it for her, as she couldn't watch it tonight either.)

So at 8pm instead of finding myself in must-see T-vana, I ditched a television wasteland with nothing to offer me but TBS's ST-TNG: A Five Day Marathon.

So, as the rest of the world has watched this episode and is raving about it (well, those who are Buffy geeks anyhow), I seal myself in an anti-blog bubble for the day, refusing to let the tiniest bit of spoilage mar my timeshifting of bliss for 22 hours.

Just look at all the temptation out there. (I assume there are search results. I refuse to indulge in a glance.)

Clearly, this will be the problem when everyone gets TV on demand. How will people know what to talk about at the watercooler/latte bar/instant messenger?

Here's a final thought for the evening: You can rent DVDs all over the place, but not CDs. If DVDs became readily copyable, do you think they would stop renting them? If CDs became copyproof, do you think they would start?

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What good are reviews anyhow? How is it important, before you see the film, to read that "Kevin Smith showed a mastery of the niche-kitsch movie genre"? Basically, all you're going to do with these reviews is either decide whether to see the movie or not, or spout off to others and regurgitate the analysis (like you might quote Vickar's "Work in Essex County" page 98), acting all knowledgeable about a movie you haven't seen.

So the only thing a reviewer can do is suggest whether you should or should not see the film. J&SB^2 is good. Not as good as any of the other View Askew films in my opinion, but mostly because each film in the Askewniverse falls into a different genre, and the slapstick self-referential genre isn't one I enjoy as much. That said, its a really good example of the genre, and not too stupid (read: Airplane 2).

There's lots I could say in a conversation about the movie, but why skirt the line between discourse and spoilage? If you saw it, talk to me. I'd love to gab. If you haven't seen it and you thought you might want to, then see it. It's not bad. If you thought maybe you should catch it on video, then do that. It's not so exceptional that it'd rock the world of a non Kevin Smith fan, but it's a fun romp.Pity this is the one the series ends on though. Of all the films, it has the least catharsis.

If you want a more traditional review (that I happen to completely agree with) check out Benjy's take.

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The more I read today, the more I think this is just a huge media buzz stunt by Lucasfilm. How else could they have pulled this off?

My favorite part is bioethicist Art Caplan, quoted on the front page saying, "Human cloning is scary."

Frankly, I just hope it's scarier than Episode One.

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Anyone else find it amusing that Lucasfilm waits until the day scientists announce they will attempt to create 200 cloned humans to unveil the name of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones?

Coincidence? The 200 women 'host volunteers' will be impregnated in November, just in time for a July gala premiere with 200 identical babies to drive the point home.

It's funny how times change. 20 years ago, Star Wars was the inspiration for entirely new realms of military funding, and now it's a harbinger of things best banned (according to the gov't).

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So Sunday I went back to helping Chris shoot his film short (currently referred to as the 'Untitled Sundance Project'). We filmed on the Berkeley campus for about six hours, and I didn't have sunscreen on for... about six hours. I now have a toasted face.

The shooting went great however, with the small mishap of having one roll of miniDV tape break during review, so we had to reshoot several scenes. All in all I have to say I'm very impressed with the cast in this piece. Since Chris lives in LA but came up here for a weekend of shooting, he didn't get the chance to meet his actors before shooting, but it couldn't have turned out better.

They're all part of an acting troupe (organization, what have you), called Bare Witness. They were superb. you should go to their site and check out their short character pieces.

Anyhow, late for work, must go work. Underblog's design is coming along great. The code will be in place soon and then I'll be able to share it with everyone.

Oh, and totally off topic, I discovered yesterday that, apparently, 'Mr. Longarm' owns the trademark on the color yellow.

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Okay, so I didn't actually skip out on seeing PotA with friends last night. We enjoyed the movie, but I could see how both of the reviews I read were justifiable.After seeing it, I had many questions, with one at the forefront of my brain (small spoiler).

Anyhow, hats off and much flag-waving to all the bloggers who are starting the 24-hour blogathon today at noon! I'm helping my friend Chris make a movie today, and I'm going to a BBQ at Ali and Mark's after that, but I'll be cutting out early to work on two projects I hope to get out of the door this weekend, underblog and Blog Purity 2001.

Have a great weekend! Talk to you soon.

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(Or 'Mr. PotA')

I haven't seen it, and I want to, but I'm a little conflicted.

Keep in mind that the Chronicle is usually pretty heavy-handed with their reviews. This is the publication that called Star Wars (the first one, 1977, blah blah) "Drek. Don't see this piece of trash."

Still, I have almost a dozen friends seeing it tonight (PotA, not SW) so I'm sure there will be some sort of consensus tomorrow.

Meanwhile I still haven't seen Final Fantasy, another movie with conflicting reviews. My list is growing faster than it's shrinking, though Em, Am, Rick, and I did see Legally Blonde last night...

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I'm looking forward to this movie more than anything else this summer.

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Memento was, well, memento. It was incredibly well acted, written, and directed. I just think it was designed to have people leave the theater debating their own interpretations, when all along there isn't a right interpretation, just a movie that was supposed to spur debate into a mythical 'true intention' of the story.

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Going to see Memento tonight, months after everyone kept telling me to see it. Jetlagsleep is kicking in around 9pm nowadays (if yesterday is an indication) so hopefully I'll make it through what has been related to me as a very mentally taxing but worthwhile experience.

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Hah. So I was telling my mom about the Weakest Link tryouts (the story really is coming! It's just that I'm balancing and cropping 18 pictures while packing and the day's in a serious tizzy), and she told me how yesterday she went to the Hollywood Bowl (she lives in Los Angeles, as does most of the rest of my family) to sing the Sound of Music. Thousands of Sound of Music fans gather in the amazing amphitheater and they show the film along with subtitles, karaoke-style, as the crowd belts out the songs!

In a way, it's just like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, in that you dress up and sing along with everyone else, but probably unlike it in that there's no made-up verses, or Transylvanian transsexuals, although there's probably more virgins (that is, 'singalong virgins' in the audience, and 'virgins in the actual film.' I imagine there are more real virgins at an actual Rocky Horror night than at the Sound of Music deal (at least per capita (but then you never know, if they've been going to Rocky for a while...)) checking.. yup, one more paren ). Ahh, balanced parentheses... Well, that's all for now. I just wonder when singalong Moulin Rouge is coming...

PS: Visit Sing-a-long Worldwide if you want to find out about their other performances, or if you like cute feelgood flash navigation.

PPS: Digging deeper, it seems that they're in San Francisco, at the Castro from tomorrow, Ju