He did not look like he wanted to be interviewed during the postgame show. Though we weren’t particularly invested in either team, we watched the game. I was astonished by how low-scoring it was, especially at the end of the half. If the result had been different, I think people would have felt bad for the Giants, but they made it a lot farther than anyone expected them. This way, the Giants were giant-slayers, and I was sorry the Patriots didn’t get to complete their perfect season.
The ads weren’t all that memorable. I liked the Godfather tribute with Alex Rocco, and a few others made us smile (the first baby e*Trade one, for example, where he spits up at the end). It’s hard to dazzle with technology any more, since you can do virtually anything you want with computers these days (simply the presence of morphing used to be a big deal in a commercial), so they have to rely on actual content to impress these days, and I’m not sure many of them succeeded.
A short story that I had accepted for a crime anthology over three years ago was returned to me today when the publisher decided not to go forward with the book, and a few others as well. There had been a change of publisher mid-project and I had my doubts the book would ever see the light of day. However, I made an amateurish mistake when I signed the simple contract—there was no rights reversion clause. I discovered this a year or so ago when I considered pulling the story from the anthology. Lesson learned: always make sure there’s a clause that says that you get the story back if the book is produced within a certain time period. Now I have a good story to start sending around again. I did some proofing last night while I watched the football game and didn’t change much except some minor grammar issues, one continuity flaw that eluded me in 2003, and a change of location to satisfy the first market I intend to submit it to.
We saw Untraceable this weekend. Based on the trailers, I expected a lot of wonky computer-babble that didn’t hold water, but they actually did an impressive job of hand-waving that seemed credible. Diane Lane is always fine in her films, and Tom Hanks’ son Colin was very good, too. A decent thriller, with a punchy ending. We also watched a french movie called Angel-A that starred Jamel Debbouze, who had a small role in Amelie as the assistant to the greengrocer. His costar was Danish model Rie Rasmussen—it was interesting to hear someone speak French with a Danish accent. The film was funny, a little trite and ridiculous, but amusing. Rasmussen was in De Palma’s Femme Fatale.
After years of feeding ink cartridges to inkjet printers, I decided to invest in a laser printer. I was amazed to be able to get one for about $100, a Brother HL-2070N. The bonus is that it plugs into our WiFi modem so it can be used from any computer in the house, even if the main hub computer is off. Toner cartridges are about half the price of the printer, but in draft mode I can get 5000 copies out of one, and the draft copies look as good as anything I ever seen from the inkjet.
One Response to I felt bad for Bill Belichick