dodging & burning: a long time ago…

box office breakers

Today James Cameron’s science-fiction action-adventure AVATAR officially became the highest-grossing film of all time, based on dollars and cents. That’s of course not adjusted for inflation when compared to older films, and not accounting for the higher cost of 3D and IMAX tickets.

But all those stats aside, what film quite simply sold the most tickets at the box office? What are the top flicks in terms of the plain ol’ number of admissions?

In that spirit, here are cinema’s adjusted ten top ten, appended with the number of tickets sold, according to the tracking website Box Office Mojo:

1. Gone with the Wind

283,100,000 tickets sold

2. Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs

225,300,000

3. Star Wars

176,900,000

4. E.T.

158,000,000

5. 101 Dalmatians

143,100,000

6. Bambi

140,800,000

7. Titanic

130,900,000

8. Jaws

128,600,000

9. The Sound of Music

119,300,000

10. The Ten Commandments

117,800,000

ramen mania

 A friend of mine once described Japan as the last place on earth you can visit and feel like you’re on Mars.  He meant it affectionately, of course.  For western visitors, Japan is a wonderfully disorienting place.  Its popular culture, architecture, social customs  – everything! – is gloriously unique and utterly unlike the US. 

The friend who made this comment should know, too.  He’d just returned from spending several months there.  He was a wildly successful television producer, who’d won fame and fortune early in his career, enough so to allow him to walk away from all of it and pursue a lifelong dream: indulging his love of Japanese culture by temporarily moving there.

According to him, perhaps nothing is as deliciously representative of Japanese culture as their rich tradition of ramen houses, restaurants that cater to Japanese patrons’ bottomless appetite for savory noodles, served in a rich, meaty broth, often highlighted with savory chunks of pork or exotic flags of seaweed.

In that vein, here’s a fantastic piece of travel writing from the NY Times’ Matt Gross, chronicling his six-day journey through the ramen houses of Tokyo.  To grasp the Japanese fealty toward their ramen tradition, Gross writes, “Combine New Yorkers’ love of pizza, hot dogs and hamburgers, throw in some Southern barbecue mania, and you’ll still only begun to approximate Tokyo’s obsession with ramen.” 

As Gross also notes, to understand the cult of ramen, you have to forget that cheap, sodium-laden junk from college.  These modern ramen houses are a jewel of Japan’s glorious culinary traditions.  They’ve survived the ages to find a new vogue in the thousands of sleek, trendy new restaurants around the country.  Young people often wait in line for hours, then maneuver the ritual of ordering – from either a human waiter, or more commonly, a vending machine – to procure their food.

As Gross writes, “From then on, there is only one sound – the slurping of noodles.”

Mmmm… 

Pour over every savory word right here!

question and answer

In the immediate aftermath of a robust but fairly predictable State of the Union, Obama yesterday visited the House Republicans conference in Baltimore.  Before the watchful eyes of news cameras, he spoke briefly, then took questions from Republican congressmen and women for nearly an hour and a half.  It was a glorious spectacle - a president engaging the opposition in civil, issue-oriented debate.  Fancy that!

As the NY Times political blog The Caucus commented yesterday:

The encounter at a Baltimore hotel was unlike any of Mr. Obama’s presidency or very many other presidencies, for that matter. While he met with the Republican caucus once before and occasionally invites Republican leaders to the White House, they have never opened their dialogue to the public in a sustained way so that it could be broadcast live on national television. His predecessors likewise generally did not engage the opposition in a public back and forth.

Whether it will change the dynamics of a polarized capital or not remained unclear. Neither side gave much in terms of policy even as they professed interest in moving past the bitterness of the past year and working together. But Mr. Obama promised to invite Republican leaders to the White House once a month this year to talk through issues with him and Democratic leaders, and both sides walked out struck by a debate that was unusually substantive and civil in the context of a poisonous political era.

Despite being largely without precedent in our recent politics, the back-and-forth may be remembered as one of the most iconic moments of Obama’s first term.  I caught the event replaying last night on C-Span.  It looked more like a fiery exchange in the House of Commons than it did an encounter between American political leaders. 

The take-home message, I think, is that Obama continues to display an openness to dialogue, a stirring intellectual rigor, and a commitment to that rarest of species, true bipartisan leadership.  He also showed an ease and fluency with the issues that should put do-nothing conservatives on notice. 

At a moment when liberals have taken to panning Obama for failing to confront Republicans, he’s stepped up to spar with his foes, and maybe even bring them in from the cold.  The result could be compromise that benefits all of us.

Check out the full Q&A here or here.

semanticals: recluse at rest

“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s”

-JD Salinger, 1919-2010

heaven-sent debris

Some days it feels like the sky is falling.

And some days it actually is.

Such was the case for Dr. Frank Ciampi. The good doctor runs a humble two-story medical office, the Williamsburg Square Family Practice, in Lorton, Virginia. Last Thursday, as he sat in his office, chipping away at some paperwork, Dr. Ciampi heard a thunderous crash echo out from a nearby examining room. He rushed in to discover a heap of plaster and debris decorating the carpet.

Oh, and a gaping hole in the roof.

Not to mention the smoking interstellar rock on the floor.

As the Washington Post reports, a “glassy-smooth,” baseball-sized meteorite plunged down from outer space and tore straight through the roof of Dr. Ciampi’s own Exam Room 2.

It’s almost flattering, right? Like a sign from Zeus.

According to the Post:

Cari Corrigan, a planetary scientist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History, confirmed it.

“It’s beautiful,” she gushed on Wednesday, after examining the rock.

“The first thing we look at is what’s called the fusion crust on the outside,” she said. “It’s kind of a black, shiny coating, because when it passes through the atmosphere, it’s melting a little at a time. So it’s like an outer layer of glass, of melted rock.”

That, plus flecks of metal in the rock, confirmed it had come from space, she said.

Corrigan said small meteorites hit Earth “fairly often.” “We’re bombarded by stuff like that all the time,” she said. Since most of the planet’s surface is uninhabited, most meteorites land a long, long way from people. And most of those that do hit inhabited areas go unnoticed, she said.

Every now and then, though, there’s a landing like the one in Lorton. She said the meteorite weighs just over a half pound and probably was traveling about 220 mph when it hit the building.

At 220 mph, Dr. Ciampi is lucky he was in the next room. Interstellar debris blazing out of the sky… that’s bound to leave a mark.

Fortunately the only damage sustained was to the office roof.  All of which begs the question: are falling meteorites covered by insurance?  I suppose that’s an act of God if ever there was one.

Now if Doc finds himself imbued with super powers, then I’ll be REALLY impressed.

And in case you’re a little chilled by that whole “small meteorites hit Earth fairly often” part of the article, consider this: the odds of being hit by one range upward of a trillion to one.

tomorrow’s headlines

It’s often said that the media loves nothing more than reporting on itself.  It’s certainly true, too, that the act of serving as newsmaker carries a requisite note of vanity.  For the last several years, we’ve watched print media, particularly the newspaper industry, write its own obituary, slowly and with high theatrics, seemingly speeding its own descent into irrelevance with myopic misunderstanding and paranoia about the nature of the web.

In fact, we’re entering into a dynamic new era for the printed word, or in this case, the pixelated word, in which readers – which is to say thinkers, critics, innovators, dreamers – read and digest more than ever, creating an intellectual and cultural marketplace of ideas unlike any seen before.

That said, virtually every week brings grave and grim reports of the demise of yet another vaunted magazine no one reads, or yet another regional paper that repackages and regurgitates second-hand news from the wires.

And for all the collective brain power in the world of print journalism, I’m constantly surprised that they can’t imagine a bright new future for themselves.  Instead, they’ve been giving away their content for free on the web, then wondering why their business is dying. 

Most Americans now collect their news from online sources.  True to the nature of capitalism, innovators have profited by feeding that appetite: technology has developed to beam such web material onto your PDA, smart phone, Kindle, and within coming weeks, your brand spankin’ new Apple tablet computer, which many in the tech realm expect will feature a wide-screen, full-color e-reader component likely to revolutionize that format in much the same way their iPod did the MP3 player.

Thankfully, today brings another thrill of evolution.  This morning the NY Times announced that, beginning next year, they plan to charge for content on their website.  Though the proposed business model hasn’t been clearly defined, it’s likely the new system will allow visitors to click on a sampling of free articles each month.  This will allow the sort of large clearinghouse news sites most news junkies love (think Huffington Post) to link to the NY Times without their surfers hitting an immediate ”pay to pass” log-in screen.  Beyond those ten or so free articles, however, the site will levy a flat fee to access the rest of their content.

The big question of our media age remains, how do these traditional industries monetize the Internet?  This can be a scary question for those who fear the privatization of what’s now a sort of informational Wild West.  At the same time, for newspapers and publishing to evolve into the next phase of their being, for writers and journalists to make a living at their craft, we need to answer the question.  

Ad revenue, even at a hugely trafficked site like the NY Times, won’t cut it any longer, if it ever did.  Old-school journalism ain’t cheap, and for the printed word to pass through this wondrous and strange adolescence, there’s bound to be growing pains.

fevered fanboys

Oh Jabba, you old horndog… 

Ask any red-blooded nerd under the age of forty to name the paragon of female sexuality, and the answer will be nigh on unanimous: Princess Leia, or more specifically, Leia in her slave/concubine gold bikini get-up from the opening setpiece of Return of the Jedi. 

It’s in just this outfit that we find her at the film’s opening, allegedly having handed herself over as entertainer cum love slave to the dread gangster-slug, all to save her beloved heartthrob Han, who’s been frozen into a carbonite popsicle to gussy up the  palace walldressings.  And how much does Jabba just LOVE LOVE LOVE this arrangement?  So much so that he keeps poor Leia CHAINED TO HIS PERSON at all times. 

Whew!  Now there’s a possessive lover. 

Yes, the image of love-slave Leia has been hardwired straight into our id since a young age.  No doubt Carrie Fisher still cringes at the thought of all those long nights her nubile form has haunted the fevered mind of many a lonely geek.

And so it’s in that spirit that our friends at LA Weekly sent their sharpshooting shutterbugs to downtown Los Angeles’ popular burlesque club Bordello for last weekend’s Star Wars-themed night.  The event, as you might guess, packed the house.  Not even LA’s irony-drenched uber-hipsters are immune to the sexy, seductive pull of a galaxy far, far away.  Here’s some highlights of the evening:

spray-on solutions

Oh thank you Baby Jesus for small favors!  Those of you who frequent the rantings of this blog know this ain’t the kind of thing I do often, but I must – I truly MUST, damnit! – give a shoutout to a sensational new product I just discovered. 

But WHAT IS IT?!? you holler to the sky.

I’m talking about Grandma’s Secret Wrinkle Remover!

First some backstory.  This morning I embarked on an epic series of laundry loads.  It’d been a few weeks, and I was down to the third and fourth-string skivvies and socks.  You know, the ones that ride up, ride low, or cling tight.  The ones you don’t like to pull into the rotation unless the utmost hygienic need demands it. 

So I passed the better part of the day washing, drying and folding.  And when the final load came out of the dryer, what did I find?  Several of my shiniest, fanciest of fancy, classy-type collared shirts were crushed into tiny little balls in the back region of the dryer – horribly, seemingly irrevocably wrinkled. 

And here it was Sunday night!  A school night!

Imagine my discontent!

But it was then my beloved F&L, canny, watchful, enigmatic feminine presence that she is, dug deep into her drawer of top-secret girl supplies.  With nary a feather ruffled, she – reputedly the “weaker” sex – launched into that inimitable problem-solving, miracle-working mode saved for just such crisis scenarios, and brought forth a seemingly innocuous spray bottle of that holy elixir of wrinkle-removing power, Grandma’s Secret!

Who’s Grandma is this? 

How did she learn such cunning secrets? 

Can’t say for sure.  Her past is cloaked in mystery. 

Here’s what we do know:

The directions, as I read them, seemed too blissfully simple to be genuine.  Just spray your wrinkled garment, smooth out the wrinkles, let it dry – and WHAM-O!  Good as ironed! 

And yet how has this not rendered that ageless bane, the iron and ironing board, haplessly irrelevant???

The universe is replete with such unanswerables.

But right about now you’re probably saying to yourself, okay, it removes wrinkled, but what ELSE can it do?  Wait, there’s more!  As if this product couldn’t get any better, feast your doubting mind on this fact: Grandma’s Secret Wrinkle Remover ALSO eliminates odors!  And for those of you who know me, you’ll testify that I can use all the odor-fighting power I can wrangle.

Believe me, too, this endorsement comes wholly from the bottomless gratitude of my satisfied heart.  We here at A Farther Room have neither been contacted by the makers of Grandma’s Secret, nor solicited to offer paid promotion of any sort.[1]

Grandma’s Secret Wrinkle Remover – buy it now! 

---

[1] But would we be interested in just such an offer?  Heck yes!  If so inclined, please contact A Farther Room at 14423 46th St.; New York, NY 90034.  ATTN: Promotions Dept.

criminal network

The media circus just added another ring.  The story blows my mind.  Over in the UK, Craig “Lazie” Lynch, recently convicted for armed robbery and sentenced to seven years in prison, escaped from jail, and started a Facebook page.  The best part?  He’s using it to send taunting messages to police.  Here’s the full story from KTLA:

UNITED KINGDOM — A fugitive who escaped from a British prison earlier this year has been taunting police over the Internet using, of all things, his Facebook page.

Convicted burglar Craig “Lazie” Lynch has been updating his Facebook profile regularly since he escaped from prison three months ago.

In postings, he’s been mocking authorities for failing to find him, and openly talking about moving to the United States.

In his most recent post, Lynch even self promotes: “I’m messaging you all to tell you check out Channel 5 News UK. I just gave them an exclusive phone interview.”

Police say Lynch was serving a seven-year sentence for committing a burglary with a weapon.

They’re appealing to Lynch’s nearly 4,000 Facebook friends to help track him down.

And just for ol’ fashioned shits and giggles, have a gander at his Facebook fan page. That 4,000 person friend count has ballooned to over 23,000.  Facebook shut down his previous page, only to have another spring up.

Check out all those comments, some folks cheering him on, others advising him to suck it up and serve his time.

And yes, he actually set up an interview with local news in Britain, and hyped the event via Facebook.  Ballsy, no?

It’s a vicious circle: further attempts to cut off the cyber stuntmaking only propagate his status as renegade web celeb.  He’s quick becoming the PT Barnum of fugitives.

All of which begs the question, can’t they track the IP addresses and pinpoint his location(s)?

Not with all the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men.