Jeremy Blachman's Weblog: 2012

Tonight's Democratic Debate

I just watched the Democratic debate on MSNBC.  Not a thrilling 90 minutes of television, although Clinton was a little more combative than she was last week in Texas, and Tim Russert seemed nicely well-prepared with specific questions about statements each of the candidates has made in the past.  For the most part, I think Clinton needed to get Obama to say something stupid in order for her to turn her ship around, and she didn't, and I expect we'll find there wasn't much news that comes out of the debate.  I was starting to drift back into the copy of Baseball Prospectus 2008 that arrived in the mail yesterday and has been keeping me from doing anything terribly productive for the past 24 hours, but Obama's attempt to wedge a closing statement into his answer to a question about any regrets he has in his time in office made me look up, and I wanted to post it.  It's nothing extraordinary, but I thought it was a really nicely disarming and satisfying answer.  He's been really good at not making mistakes, at not letting Clinton's anger goad him into getting angry back.  And as the frontrunner at this point, I think that's really all he has to do.  Clinton tried to find an attack tonight, but nothing she said really seemed to land.

(P.S. I'm guessing this isn't on the bookmark list of all that many of my readers, but the best live-blogging of the debate -- and pretty consistently the best, quickest, and most entertaining political read on the web, and the first thing I check when I'm looking to see what the big stories are, is The Corner on the National Review web site.  I know, I wouldn't have thought so either!  Then again, I gave 25 bucks to Joe Lieberman during the '04 election cycle, so who knows where the heck I am on the political spectrum anyway.)

Anyway, from Obama:

You know, there is a vanity aspect and ambition aspect to politics. But when you spend as much time as Senator Clinton and I have spent around the country, and you hear heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story, and you realize that people's expectations are so modest.

You know, they're not looking for government to solve all of their problems. They just want a little bit of a hand-up to keep them in their homes if they're about to be foreclosed upon, or to make sure their kids can go to college to live out the American dream.

You know, it is absolutely critical that we change how business is done in Washington and we remind ourselves of what government is supposed to be about.

And, you know, I have a lot of confidence that whoever ends up being the nominee that the Democratic standard-bearer will try to restore that sense of public service to our government. That's why I think we're both running, and I'm very pleased that I've had this opportunity to run with Senator Clinton.

Book Covers

There's a great blog I linked to once before that posts about interesting book covers.  Today's post compares the US and UK covers for a book called "The Bush Tragedy."  The difference in tone is pretty astounding.  Personally, I like the UK cover a lot better, but can totally see why a US publisher would go for the safer and more serious choice. 

It's one of the most interesting blogs I read, but I wish they went back and did follow-up posts about sales figures and successes vs. flops, to see if the cover really seems to make much of a difference, or if the writer's impressions end up right or wrong as far as the ultimate success of the book.  Of course, factoring out the effect of a cover, when there's marketing budgets and exposure and subject matter and author fanbase and reviews and the quality of the book itself, is probably impossible. 

Although if I were a publishing executive, I might be tempted to release a book like this with two very different covers, randomize which stores get which, and see if there's measurable differences in sales... and then perhaps swap out the less effective cover for the other one and see what happens.  Frankly, there's probably twenty-five ideas just like that, with everything from cover art to author photo to marketing messaging to the blurbs on the back to the flap summary to the font size that, given the number of books published every year, and the number of roughly-identical bookstores each one gets displayed in, that I think publishers perhaps ought to be experimenting with, just to get some better sense than they have of what motivates book sales and whether there are in fact some easily-manipulable things they can do to get people to make the decision to buy.

At the very least, the first publisher to do something like this would probably get some media attention for it, and that alone would push some sales.

My Grandma Reviews: "Vantage Point"

"Don't ask me what the name of this movie was.  It just came into the theater two days ago.  About someone trying to assassinate the President, I don't know, I think I fell asleep.  I don't know why we saw this movie.  The title had two words."

"Vantage Point?"

"Yes.  That's it.  It was about an assassination attempt on the President, but, oh, thank god he survived.  I'm kidding.  No one watching this would care if he survived.  It's not a personal movie.  It's a very, uh, limited movie.  It's only about this one thing, nothing else happens.  It opens up where everyone is going to this summit meeting and someone tries to kill the President and that's it.  And they think he's dead but then they find him in a seat of a vehicle and he's alive.  I think I fell asleep, because it seemed like it was over in a minute.  And nothing happened.  But everyone else said nothing happened, so I don't even think I missed anything.  I'm glad you don't want to run for President.  People are always trying to kill the President.  You know, I think about this sometimes.  There's been so many assassination attempts on Presidents throughout history -- Lincoln, Kennedy, Reagan, and so many others -- but I wonder sometimes, and it's terrible to even think this, but I wonder why no one has tried to assassinate the current President.  His popularity is so low, and there are so many people -- I go to the senior center and everybody hates him, everybody talks about how terrible he is.  Of course, I don't think the people going to my senior center have the energy to kill the President.  But still, I wonder why there hasn't been an attempt on his life.  I mean, I'm glad there hasn't been, but you would think, with so many people so angry about his administration, there would be.  I really wonder why anyone would want to be President.  It's so dangerous, and everyone ends up disliking you, you have no privacy, and the money isn't even that good.  They don't get paid that much, they all have money from other things they've done.  But I think it's about wanting a legacy, wanting to be important, wanting to go down in history.  But it's too much.  It's more than one person needs to take on, at least for any normal, sensible person.  That's why I can't get too excited about anyone who runs for President.  I think there has to be something wrong with someone to want to be President, has to be something that's not getting fulfilled in their lives, some tremendous need for power or respect, or something.  But anyway, this movie didn't touch me at all.  It was just this one moment, over and over again, it didn't go anywhere at all.  But one thing I do have to say, they certainly know how to create havoc, people leaving the place, getting in their cars, the whole movie was that, just getting away from the crowd there, where they're having this.  The photography of the confusion on the roads, people trying to get away, that I have to admit was done very well.  I don't know how they film cars going one way, and other cars going the other way and people piling up on the highway.  The drivers they must get to film this thing.  They must be crazy drivers.  The whole movie seemed to be about cars going one way and the other way.  And it's something you marvel at, but then it gets boring.  And there was nothing else in the movie.  There was no other part of the plot.  I want to see something personal, something about a family, something where someone in a family does something so horrible that you can't help but be drawn in.  Now they just have these movies with chase scenes and I really couldn't care less.  I don't recommend you seeing it.  You should see something better than this.  We let [friend who picked Fool's Gold] pick the movie again.  That was a mistake.  Me and [other friend] should learn our lesson.  Next time, she is not picking the movie.  You remind me if I forget: don't let her pick the movie!"

My Grandma Reviews: "Definitely, Maybe"

"You know, while I was watching it, I liked it.  The romance, the story, it held my attention, I was into it.  It was only after I left the theater and started to think about it that I realized it wasn't very good."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, none of it made any real sense.  That girl wouldn't have known nothing about her mother, and the way the guy kept running into the women again and again and breaking up with them, and getting back together, it was all very contrived.  That's the word for it.  Contrived."

"Yeah, I thought so too."

"And the little girl!  She was much too precocious.  Even a teenager doesn't talk like that.  They tried to make her seem so sophisticated, with all that talk about sex and things like that.  Little girls don't talk like that.  Maybe they're trying to make it seem like it's some kind of different world, where this is what girls talk about, get people excited to see the movie because there's a little girl talking about sex.  But that didn't seem realistic at all.  I couldn't really stand the little girl.  She was trying much too hard to act like an adult."

"She's eleven in real life, even though she's younger in the movie."

"But I will tell you one thing.  The man in the movie, I don't know his name--"

"Ryan Reynolds."

"Okay, I'll tell you, he has the most handsome face I have ever seen.  That face, and that body, so tall and everything, I think he was the most good-looking man I have ever seen.  He was so good-looking.  You really don't see people, even in movies, who are as handsome as he is.  He really is quite handsome.  All you want to do the whole movie is look at his face.  So it definitely kept my interest.  Even if the story wasn't anything special, just looking at him the whole movie."

"Um..."

"You don't think he's the most handsome man you've ever seen?  He really is.  Your old grandma is telling you, he is a very handsome man."

"Any other thoughts about the movie?"

"Well, I thought it was smart they had the gimmick of not knowing which is the mother, even though it was contrived and didn't make any sense.  Because, like I said, it did keep my attention while I was watching it.  And if I didn't think about it afterwards, I'd say it was a really enjoyable movie."

Definitely, Maybe... Probably Not, Don't Bother

I thought it was kinda dull.

Nice premise, but it didn't do too much with the execution.  My grandma is supposed to see it tomorrow, so we'll see what she thinks.

My Grandma Reviews: "Fool's Gold"

"Okay, I know I've said this before, but this really is the worst movie I've seen in a long, long time.  Truly, truly dumb.  No feeling at all.  You watch this movie, and you're left feeling nothing.  I couldn't wait to leave.  And [my friend who picked this one] said she's never again going to be the one who picks the movie."

"What was so terrible about it?"

"Everything.  These people are looking for some sort of treasure, and they don't even seem to like each other, and then they fall in love I guess... but it was just so stupidly done."

"Did they find the treasure?"

"I don't even know.  I guess they found something.  Yeah, probably.  Don't see this movie."

Micturition Syncope

No, don't Google it yet, you'll ruin my boring story.

So the reason for no posts this week is that I came down with an upper respiratory infection the other day, which now seems to be getting better, and I suppose is my punishment for coming back to New York for a couple of weeks while the strike's still going on, and not telling my insides that we were leaving the pleasant weather of LA to return to winter.

Anyway, woke up Tuesday feeling pretty terrible, coughing, fever, not so fun.  Worse on Wednesday, figured it was the flu or something.  Wednesday night, I got up at about 4:30 in the morning just to go the bathroom, and didn't actually feel that bad, went to the bathroom, and immediately afterwards I felt the life completely drain from my body, totally felt like I was going to pass out or something -- I've never passed out, so I wasn't sure that was exactly what I was feeling, but it was very scary -- knew I hadn't felt all that terrible getting out of bed, but knew I needed to get back to bed, somehow I stumbled out of the bathroom and into the living room, but I'm pretty sure there was a second or two that I blacked out.  I was dazed for about thirty seconds, but then felt reasonably steady again, and was able to get up and take some Robitussin before going back to sleep.

So that pretty much freaked me out and convinced me I had the plague and was clearly not equipped to fight whatever was going on in my body.  Went to the doctor yesterday, he told me it's a run-of-the-mill upper respiratory infection, gave me an antibiotic, and he said the passing out thing was something called Micturition Syncope, where it's not completely uncommon for men to pass out after urinating, if they've been standing up to urinate, because of the change in blood pressure.  And that the infection and fever made this not unusual.

I'm feeling a lot better today -- still coughing, but fever pretty much gone and I feel like a human being for the first time since Monday, and expect by Sunday or Monday I'll be back to normal -- but, seriously, the passing out or almost passing out thing -- the scariest thing I've ever experienced, and it's totally bizarre to me that this is a real and benign thing that can just happen.  "Yeah, I was peeing and next thing I know, I passed out."  Google tells me it's responsible for as many as 9% of all fainting episodes, and especially happens when guys are intoxicated (and, hence, dehydrated).  Maybe I've just lived a medically sheltered and healthy life (thank goodness) but I was seriously, seriously frightened.

And then I e-mailed a friend about it yesterday, and he was like, "yeah, I think a similar thing happened to me once a couple years ago. Like I woke up, and I think it was after urinating, I just felt like I was passing out."  Like it's a normal thing?  What other mysterious bizarre things do our bodies do that we're not told about??

Okay, boring story over.  Back to sleep.  This might be the last day of the writer strike!  Yay!

My Grandma Reviews: "The Bucket List"

"You liked this movie?"

"No."

"So why did you tell me to see it?"

"Because at least I thought it would be easy to follow, and you'd know what was going on."

"Oh, I did!  But it wasn't any good!  I thought it was such a weird movie, such a strange idea for a movie.  When you're close to death, you don't feel like running away like they did!  How could they do all the things they did?  They didn't feel well!  So that spoiled the whole thing for me, because I didn't think that was realistic.  When you're in that position in life, you don't take off on adventures like that.  You want to stay put.  You don't have the energy.  You think they're two young kids, it didn't make any logical sense.  Plus, what kind of illnesses were there where they had no symptoms and just wanted to run off and have fun.  And to leave his wife the way he did -- that wasn't very nice!  He just took off.  When you're old you realize that the important thing in life is family.  Family is what you have at the beginning, and at the end.  You want to stay close to your family when you're old, you want to spend time with them.  You don't want to be running off on some sort of ridiculous adventure, especially if you don't even feel well.  It was a weird plot.  And if the one guy didn't have all that money they couldn't have done all these things anyway, so even if they thought they were making this movie to make people feel good about getting old, and that they can still go on adventures, no one in the real world could ever afford that kind of thing anyway.  So the whole thing was just very stupid to me.  It didn't seem like any of it could happen, I didn't believe these were real people.  If they were real people, they would have stayed home and wanted to rest, not run around the world if you have cancer and you're going to die.  What a weird movie."

My Grandma Reviews: SATURDAY MOVIE PREVIEW

Sorry for the lack of movie reviews recently: one of my grandma's friends hasn't been feeling well, so they haven't gone to the movies for a few weeks.  I just spoke to her, and they're supposed to go this afternoon.  They were going to see 27 Dresses, but it starts at 2:30 and that's too late -- they eat after the movie and don't like to go home after it gets dark.  So they changed it to Untraceable.  I'm trying to talk her out of it.  "It's about the FBI catching cybercriminals on the Internet.  I don't think any of you are going to understand what's going on."  "What kind of criminals?"  "Exactly.  You should see something else."  "What else is playing?"  "Cloverfield.  But I hear that makes people nauseous."  "Oh, we don't want to get nauseous."  "No, you don't.  I guess see if they'll see The Bucket List at 1:50.  It's about old people."  "Oh, come on, they don't make movies about old people."  "No, it is.  I saw it.  I thought it was not very good, but at least it's something you'll be able to follow and understand.  I really think you should see that instead of Untraceable."  "Oh, I don't want to mess up our plans."  "I'm just trying to help."  "Okay, I'll call Sarah and see if I can convince her."  "Okay."

So,,, stay tuned for a review of either Untraceable or The Bucket List later on this weekend...

(Also, there's a new Anonymous Lawyer post I posted yesterday, in case you'd given up hope there'd ever be new posts over there again.)

Eli Stone

The new ABC drama Eli Stone premiered last night -- it's on ABC.com if you're curious and missed it.  It's about a big-firm lawyer who starts to see visions.  I'd seen the original pilot and loved it -- just watched last night's premiere on ABC.com and was surprised that they made a couple of noticeable changes.  They recast Eli's mother, from Joanna Gleason to someone I didn't recognize, basically making her warmer-seeming but less sophisticated.  I wonder if that was partly an availability thing -- if they decided the character will come back, Joanna Gleason may be harder to get/pay than someone else.  And, more critically, in the original, his fiancee basically dumps him and we're left to believe he's going to start seeing the woman he represents in the episode, who he had once slept with, in college.  But in the version that aired, they trimmed the lines with the woman he represents so it's not as clear they'll ever see each other again, and they had the fiancee come back, tell Eli she loves him, and they go off and have lunch.  I wonder if it's because Natasha Henstridge tested well (or at least better than the actress playing the plaintiff, Laura Benanti (from The Wedding Singer on Broadway)), so they wanted to switch it around so he keeps her... I don't know. 

Anyway, I didn't think either change necessarily made the pilot *better* but I like the show, and it was definitely my favorite pilot script that I read coming into this TV season, so I'm hoping the rest of the episodes are also good.