Derek's Rantings and Musings

Last night, D and I attended the final concert of The Police, ever (or at least, that's the official story). It was quite the "celebrity affair" ... Mickey Dolenz, Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Leonardo DiCaprio, Debbie Harry, James Gandolfini, we saw them all. (In fact, to a certain extent I saw too much of Gandolfini, as -- two rows behind him -- every time I moved my head to be able to see one part of the stage it seemed like his head followed *chuckle*). D even joked a little bit about how weird it was to see "Tony Soprano" bopping and dancing with the music.

From start to finish it was full of pleasant and humorous surprises - from the NYPD marching band providing ample assistance on Message In A Bottle, to Sting's daughters (and later everyone's kids) coming out on stage and dancing along with Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic, to a (literal) "Fat Lady" singing at the end of the show over the Warner Bros. "That's All Folks" anthem, there was no lack of entertainment.

It's a little sad that the reunion tour is over, but I'm glad to have been able to attend a couple nights of it, especially this one.

Video of the "final song ever" (with occasional appearances of the back of Gandolfini's head) here and Flickr stream here.

Last night, as a "mutual gift-giving event", my parents treated D and I (for my birthday), and I treated my parents (for their anniversary), to Tanglewood's 10th annual Film Night At Tanglewood, conducted by the master of motion picture scoring himself, John Williams.

Unexpected was that after performing "Anything Goes", whose vocals were provided in Temple of Doom by Kate Capshaw, Mr. Williams invited Kate Capshaw herself up onto the stage to take a bow. Once that reveal was done, however, Mr. Williams wasted no time in introducing someone who would be an obvious person to join her on stage, her husband and Mr. Williams' many-times-employer, Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg proceeded to stay on stage, seated to Williams' left, and introduced every piece of the remainder of the evening, which concentrated on the Indiana Jones movies, with an encore of music from E.T. thrown in at the end.

Near the end of the night, my "hunch" played out. I couldn't picture that Spielberg would be here in the Berkshires talking up Indiana Jones and Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, and that Karen Allen - who returned to the Indy saga in that film to much fanboy rejoicing - wouldn't make the really short trek down to Lenox. And I was right, as they brought her out on-stage as well to tons of cheering.

I feel like I've been neglecting something these past few years. I've always been a huge fan of Williams' work, and I had no idea that this was an annual thing that happened each year, only an hour away. I've always been thinking to myself "I'd really love to some day make it out to LA for one of Williams' Hollywood Bowl summer performances of film music," and in reality, I can go see that right in my backyard so to speak.

We all had a great time, and I can't wait for next year now. This is totally going to be an annual event for me.

Oh. Hell. Yeah.

I went and saw a 9:00 a.m. showing Saturday morning, not because of any fanboy "gotta be first" mindset about it but because it happened to be available, I'm an early riser, and, well, D isn't. And since she had no interest, it was a nice happenstance.

First off, I must be honest. I went in slightly jaded. There's been this huge incessant buzz, "Oh, Ledger should get an Oscar for this!", and I was reading this with a sense of "WTF, it's fucking Joker, man? That's not Oscar material...."

Oh, how wrong I was.

Ledger's Joker makes Nicholson look like a fucking chump, and that's saying a lot for what was probably one of the best "villain" performances in the whole heap of Batman flicks out there. Nicholson's Joker exemplified "crazy", but Ledger's Joker actually went the next step past that to "insane".

I don't want to say too much, for fear of spoiling it for people, except to say ...

At 2h30m, it had the potential (as I was walking in) to be "too long". I thought to myself, "they edited it long to put as much Ledger material in there as they could, the bastards! They couldn't find the heart to edit out 'bad' material".... again, oh how wrong I was. It was over before I realized it, and there was very little that I looked at and wondered "why did that survive the editing process?"

Overall, this is, hands-down, the best Batman flick of the franchise, and quite possibly one of the best comic translations ever. (It's a toss-up between this and Iron Man for me right now, I see reasons both of them could lay claim to the title).

Go see this. Now. Wherever you are whatever you're doing. Call in sick, leave early, play hookie, whatever it takes. You won't be sorry. Unless you get fired. Then maybe you will, but don't blame that on me.

It's been hard to avoid hearing about the Fannie-Mae/Freddie-Mac debacle, and how our congresscritters are planning to bail them out. "It'll be the end of the world" they say, "too big to be allowed to fail," they say.

I say horseshit.

There was a wonderful quote on NPR this morning which talked about the inherent impropriety of corporations where you have "Privatized profits and socialized losses."

If we -- you and I the American taxpayers -- are going to be bailing out these two giants, who've been passing along corporate profits to shareholders for years instead of building up the capital reserves they needed then the shareholder interests are immediately forfeit.

But in reality. I'm all in favor of letting them fail. Yeah, it might have some repercussions. Yeah, the corporations in question will crap themselves hard and all that. But how many private entities are we -- the voting taxpayer -- going to allow to make really really phenomenally stupid business decisions, and then have us pick up the tab for them? We do it with the airlines, we've been doing it left and right with mortgage companies, and now we're talking about doing it to the tune of billions of dollars.

No. You made your bed, now lie in it. And maybe the next generation of investors will learn to research better when they invest their money in companies with unsound business practices.

.... when I would support Yahoo becoming part of the Evil Empire, but....

So I've had some time to read the Heller decision, and my biggest concern with it, as a gun rights supporter, is this verbiage:

... It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service--M-16 rifles and the like--may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment's ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.

The court's writing here is essentially that "M-16s aren't covered, because they're not the sorts of things people have lawfully got around the house."

But the fundamental problem with this logic is that the reason people don't have M-16s around the house (in any numbers) is because they've been told by the government since 1939 that they can't.

The Court's logic here is circular. They don't want to override the 1939 prohibitions on automatic weapons and such, while still saying it's an individual right. But if it's an individual right to have "militia" weapons, the number of lawfully owned automatic weapons surely would have grown over the years.

In other words, the only reason there aren't a number of those types of weapons in place, is because there have been laws of questionable validity over the years preventing them. But now that they're "not common" (because of the government influence), they're not covered, which makes no sense whatsoever.

I'm in a big of a pickle. I have been a loyal American Airlines customer since around 2001 or so. Between flight miles, bonus miles, credit card miles, etc., etc., I've banked a metric fuckton of Frequent Flier Miles. Where I live there are only two convenient airports, Stewart/Newburgh (SWF) and Albany (ALB). Six months ago, American pulled out of Newburgh. In September, American is pulling out of Albany.

I simply can't see driving two hours, dealing with city traffic, etc., etc. to go to a NYC airport that has American Airlines, when there are two airports that are local, very convenient, mostly traffic-jam free, etc., etc.

So now I need to pick out a new "preferred" airline... Here are my options....

• AirTran (SWF)
• Delta (SWF, ALB)
• jetBlue (SWF)
• Northwest (SWF)
• US Airways (SWF, ALB)
• Air Canada (ALB)
• Cape Air (ALB)
• Continental (ALB)
• Southwest (ALB)
• United (ALB)

So let's get rid of some of them right off the bat:

Cape Air - goes to like two places. Seen that sitcom Wings? Yeah, it's like that.

AirTran - Leaving SWF the same day as American, I think.

Air Canada - Only connects through Toronto. I don't think I want *every* flight I go on to be an international one going through customs.

US Airways - If I fly out of SWF all my flights, and from ALB most of my flights, will fly through their Philadelphia hub, which according to consumerist.com has an absolutely horrendous lost-baggage rate, and a 60% on-time rate. Woot.

Northwest - Has anyone forgotten the way they treated their passengers in the 1999 Blizzard? Did they even apologize? :-)

jetBlue ... oh, jetBlue, how I want to love you. If only you flew to somewhere other than Florida from SWF. Fly me to a major city, and let me partake of your glorious service. Unfortunately, they don't, and my connecting options through jetBlue are limited to "fly to Florida, and then connect to somewhere else on the east coast, and then fly somewhere west." It's just plain silly, and won't work long-term.

So that shortens the list quite a bit....

• Delta (SWF, ALB)
• Continental (ALB)
• Southwest (ALB)
• United (ALB)

Southwest is usually cheap (which is sweet) but I really really really hate the cattle-call. It doesn't usually affect me that much, since (as D can attest) I am always early to my flights, but the fact is that when I connect through somewhere, I can't be any earlier than my flight drops me off. I've got long-ass legs and I want a guaranteed aisle seat so I can stretch them during the flight. So Southwest is really my "last ditch" airline, and certainly not where I want to start banking miles again.

I used to be a rabid United flier, but -- in all honesty I have no idea why -- I distinctly remember being SO pissed at them about something that I immediately "changed loyalties" to American. My memory is extremely hazy, but I remember that "United fucked me somehow, and American swooped in and saved the day with great customer service," and I was sold. But I'm not sure if I can hold against them something I can't remember.

Continental is, by most accounts, awesome to fly on, but you pay for that level of customer service, as I also seem to recall them being one of the more expensive airlines to fly.

Delta... I dunno. I've flown Delta recently (when I was flying back from LAX on AA a couple weeks ago, AA cancelled my LAX>ORD>ALB flight for weather (all flights through ORD actually) and AA only connects through ORD, so AA had to throw me on another airline, and hence I got to experience Delta. My Delta experience was ok (heck, they came through for me in a pinch), but my view is a bit jaded by the fact that my connection time was hellishly short (30 minutes), the first leg was late, and I ended up having to haul ass through Charlotte trying to get from my arrival gate to my departure gate.

Anyone got any good long-term experiences with any of these four? Recommendations for or against?