Posted 8:26 PM by Blah blah

Happy New Year!

I wanted to wish everyone, both our cowriters and our readers, a delightful New Year and fresh hope and joy for next year! A man is enriched mostly by his friends and relationships, so I have been both surprised and very lucky to have met so many of you this year, either online or in person. Who would have thought a little blog would help bring people together from several parts of the world?

I got some very nice cards in the post from Key in New York, Rasee in Bangkok, and Christina in Nanjing. Thank you thank you thank you!! Key will be moving blogs soon. Christina, ever the romantic, has been posting many cute dog pix recently. But it's not her dog, Xiao Xiao. I wonder whose it is?

Some new people have linked to Tiger Cafe recently. They are very cool and interesting women. Thank you and a big HI to Valerie in Manila, Ida in the San Francisco area, and some blog in SPANISH which I forget.

Valerie posted this sweet poem:

Variation on the Word Sleep
by Margaret Atwood

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun and three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again and become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
and that necessary.

Will say more later, about my move and the rest. In the meantime, have hope and joy for the fresh blank page of tomorrow.

See ya!

Posted 11:49 AM by Anonymous

New Years Resolutions

May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect ~Fight Club

It wouldn't be New Years without the obligatory resolutions everyone makes and then breaks 2 weeks later. Since I started making resolutions I think that I have kept maybe 4 or 5 of them over the course of my life. I intend to keep the ones this year, they are really important to me.

Besides, if people never kept them Mona might never have met me. Her New Year's Resolution for 2000 was: Don't date any guys with recycled names. Clearly Raven is pretty unique =D

This year they are:
1) Get Fit! - I'm not fat but I'm definitely not as fit as I used to be in college. I used to run 5 miles a day and now I get winded walking up a few flights of stairs quickly. With my schedule its hard to adopt any kind of work-out ethic but I'm going to make a conscious effort to get into a little better shape this year. My dad and I are even going to have a contest to see who can do better. The man is 58 so at least I have age on my side. Bring it on Dad!

2) Learn Italian - Mona and I are going to France and Italy for our honeymoon. I want to be able to communicate with people while I'm there are not be the stereotypical rude American that expects everyone to speak English. I have started down the path to knowledge in earnest but I need to stick with it. Besides high school Spanish my track record for sticking with languages is about 2 weeks before I get bored of them and toss the books aside.

3) Drink More Water - I read somewhere that a ridiculously large percentage of Americans are constantly dehydrated because no one drinks water. I really want to make a conscious effort to cut down on all of the soda and coffee I drink and replace them with water. Ok, I'm not ready to give up my Starbucks addiction but maybe I can cut out cokes.

4) No Man Is An Island - Mona and I have become this "organism" that pretty much keeps to itself and is a homebody. I have friends in Dallas that I haven't seen in forever and we never seem to do anything with them on the weekends. This is sort of a joint resolution I suppose, but I want to try and hang out with other adults more often on the weekends so its not always just Mona and I.

I'm not sure where this tradition came from but if anyone has any insight into that please feel free to comment. It seems like it has been around since the dawn of time.

So what are your resolutions?

Posted 9:02 PM by Anonymous

Cheating on Raven with Hugo Boss!

It may sound absurd, but Raven shouldn't use any other cologne than Armani Aqua di Gio.

Smell is a powerful sense. In which, the smell of Raven's old shirt would make me smile while I close my eyes and inhale all the scent all I could out of this dirty fabric. That brings up another point: Raven should NOT use my towel. As much as I love how Raven smells, I don't like to smell his dead cells lingering in MY towel. uh, we must work on that.

So last week for Christmas, Raven's grandmother gave him Hugo Boss cologne and his aunt gave him Tommy for Men. I thought I liked Hugo Boss, until Raven used it on Saturday. When I gave Raven a hug, I honestly felt guilty; I felt like I was cheating on Raven with Raven! Absurd? I know. It's the same man that I love and will marry, but it wasn't Raven in Armani Aqua di Gio... the man with the scent I fell in love with.

So that bring me to these questions:

Does Raven's cologne contain pheromones that seduced me?

Will I be able to get off of this 'drug' and be satisfied with Raven trying on other cologne?

Posted 10:55 AM by Blah blah

Bette Davis, On Acting

From her excellent autobiography, The Lonely Life. She is one of my favorite actresses and a great role model, famous for playing bitches and fighting for women's rights in Hollywood in the 1930s-50s. My favorite movie of hers is Now, Voyager, in which she plays an ugly duckling who blossoms into a radiant loving woman. She received ten Best Actress Oscar nominations and won two of them, "many of those for her roles as strong-minded, and frequently disagreeable women":
=============
On starting acting school in New York:

The first day I was there and every day, Mr. Currie, our dramatic teacher, would deliver a scathing attack on the theatre. He informed the seventy kids in our class that we were heading for the toughest, least glamorous life imaginable. His picture of the artist's life was a pointillism, whose dots of color were sweat, jealousy, competition, disillusionment, insecurity and more sweat. It was a lecture of futility that he repeated over and over again.

It was really the most discouraging pep talk ever delivered to a group of novices. The class was soon decimated. The little society girls folded up their tents and silently stole away. There were twelve of us left at the end of the semester. It was then that Mr. Currie told us that a real actor---a real artist---needs no pep talk. If anyone really wants to be an actor, nothing can discourage him.

"A real artist brings his own conviction and hope. He may be encouraged along this line. He cannot be discouraged. If you've stuck this term out, you've at least got the stuff."

Tough! But so is the theatre. Everything he said was true. Any artist who doesn't know that the greatest reward is his own satisfaction in work should choose an easier way of life. Acting is work. But work when you love it and fulfill yourself is life at its best. (p. 46)
_____________
Frankly, I feel that the dramatic school is important only for the basic education it imparts....How to talk. How to move. How to sit and stand....The alphabet! Fine. But knowing all the letters from A to Zed does not make one a writer....there are things that cannot be learned.

There are various [acting] schools that lay claim to revelation. For the talentless, it is true that a chart gives them direction. It can even guide them to adequacy. I watch young men and women today in all three media struggling through a psychological maze and they do not excite me theatrically.

One can draw just so much from one's personal experience...If [the actor] has no intellect, no passion, no expansion of soul, he can hardly understand a part in which these elements take precedence. He cannot even understand a part in which they are absent. One must be aware of the negative areas. How, for example, can a stupid, phlegmatic bigot be played well unless the actor, his opposite, uses selectivity and observes the accents of the character, thereby bringing him to life.

The present trend of the actor to personalize all tragedy and recall the moment in which his puppy was run over or her doll was broken in order to convey misery is sad to me. [Method acting, or the Stanislavsky method.] Although man has a basic repertoire of emotion, the subtleties in each individual are blessedly countless.

Blanche Dubois and Ophelia both liquefy before your eyes; but they melt entirely differently. Oedipus and Lear both break at the end. One cracks in half; the other crumbles to dust. Can the recalled death of the actor's sweet old Uncle William really approximate the singularity of each character's wretchedness?...

[An actor]...galvanizes his energies and his faculties and then goes out of himself not in. He pretends to be this other human being. If he has insight, he intuits and projects himself into the character, never losing the lifeline, the umbilical cord, whithout which he is a raving maniac and even worse---an amateur. He must always know he is pretending. Some part of him retains this knowledge; but he must suffer as the character just as he must move like him and speak like him.

An actor without insight is a mannequin...[A]ny real artist---has a direct line to the collective heart. This isn't pretension....His costume is made up of a thousand and one details that fall into place when his own identity is sacrificed to the other's....

Many of the girls and boys today come over quite genuinely and charmingly as themselves, which is an accomplishment of some sort. But take them out of their environment and they are lost. The classics are impossible for them. Any change of locale or time throws them.

They have simply learned to express themselves; and I'm terribly happy for them. When they learn to express the character, I shall applaud them. All the walking like a cat and flying like a bird isn't going to mean a thing if the actor meows in a Brooklyn accent or quacks like Donald Duck when he is supposed to be Francis Drake....

As personal as these troubled actors are, there is---aside from much of a muchness---the same of a sameness. They are all so busy revealing their own insides that, like all X-ray plates, one looks pretty much like the other. Their godhead, the remarkably gifted Marlon Brando, may bring (as true stars do) his own personal magnetism to every part, but his scope and projection are unarguable. He has always transcended the techniques he was taught. His consequent glamour and style have nothing to do with self-involvement but rather radiation.

I return to that spark that is the individual. An actor must be true to the spark he find in himself. And with it, he must illuminate another man and then all men. (pp. 47-50)
_____________
There's no doubt about it. Working in a stock company will always be the greatest foundation for an acting career. An actor tackles a new part each week, and there's no time for nonsense. The necessary discipline can be found no other place, plus the confidence and the technique that is gained. Crises are met and conquered. A tempo is created and sustained. The constant tension either makes you or breaks you. Every actor knows that stock can make you slick rather than profound; but you can't play a concerto until you know your scales. There's nothing wrong with facility---no matter what the artsy-craftsy claim. Stock gives an actor facility. It makes him a professional....Nothing can teach you to act like acting.

The young actors today very often have a television series where for months they play only one part. They have a Broadway play and if, hopefully, it's a success, they play the same part over a long period. Then, if they're any good, Hollywood plucks them unripe from the vine. There are more "stars" today who cannot act. And it's not their fault. They've never been given a chance to learn.

The progress of acting careers like everything else has become so accelerated that amateurs are rewarded by international fame. There's gold in all this madness and the temptation is great. How many Brandos are there who will refuse, as he did, well-paying parts in plays that bored him or wouldn't encourage his growth? [Not true in his old age.] He also was a worker. That's something else that has gone out of fashion. Nobody wants to work....The easy way is usually the destructive way.

There is no luxury like the fatigue that follows a labor of love. Nothing in the whole, wide world as soul-satisfying as a job well done. Accomlishment. Few go all out. Few will gamble. Everybody wants security. If that were the end-all, America would still belong to the Navajos.

A good percentage of our lives is spent doing things we loathe. Marvelous! It puts starch in your spine. Who looks forward to brushing his teeth, painting the shed or changing the linens? We're making our beds all right. We are...up against an astringent, dedicated society which has been toughened by sacrifice and unhappy regimentation. (pp. 65-66)

Posted 6:30 PM by Blah blah

Crazy Move!

It's plain crazy. We still cannot move into the new house. The loan company has been dragging their feet for two weeks on approving the loan, so the current owners will not give us the keys or let us move stuff into their garage.

However, the new tenants are moving into OUR place this Sunday. And people are coming to clean the carpets tomorrow (when we'll be making our old place spic and span).

That means we have to move ALL of our stuff (for my housemate, his girlfriend, and I) into his girlfriend's garage! Tonight! That is assuming we can fit three people's stuff (including furniture) into a two car garage.

Crossing our fingers, they will finally approve the loan sometime next week, and then we'll have to move AGAIN, into the new house. In the meantime we'll be homeless.

ARRGH. I still have a cold. Add this to my future move to Los Angeles, and I'll be moving three times in about one month.

Posted 9:52 AM by Blah blah

Eric Kripke: Future "Millionaire Playboy Director"

[Note on previous post: Please, guys, edit your posts more carefully before posting them. Please do NOT post long URLs into Tiger Cafe. They cause the page to get too wide. Also, instead of cutting and pasting the HTML from your page, it's better to cut and paste the text only. You don't need to put < p >text...text< / p > into Blogger. If you use blank lines between paragraphs, Blogger will take care of the rest.]

You all MUST check out this young writer/director, Eric Kripke. I was blown away by a couple of his short films on IFILM. They are some of the best short films I've ever seen! I mean it. They are meticulously planned and choreographed, professionally shot and written without wasting any time or words. They are funny as hell and stand out as the cream of the crop. This guy is gonna be famous in the future! From IFILM:

"Eric Kripke is a young writer/director with an edgy, distinctive taste for comedy. He's currently directing his debut feature film, Munchies, for MGM, produced by John Davis, Michael Hackett and David Solomon. The jet-black comedy tells the twisted tale of four anorexic high school girls who, after taking an experimental diet pill, are turned into flesh-eating zombies. Kripke has a two picture deal with DreamWorks SKG. He recently completed his first screenplay for the studio, Little Green Men. Kripke also has a deal with Warner Bros. to write and develop television pilots. In addition, Kripke is a partner in Quality Filmed Entertainment, along with filmmakers Steven Hein, Gary Bryman, Trevor Sands and Charlie Call. Quality produced both of Eric's films, as well as such award winning shorts as Peep Show and George Lucas in Love. In January 1998, Kripke's short film Battle of the Sexes premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. At the same time, his other short film, Truly Committed, won the Audience Award for Best Short at the Slamdance Film Festival. Truly Committed has also taken best short honors at the Ft. Lauderdale, Austin and Houston Film Festivals, as well as different awards from various festivals around the world. Kripke is a graduate of the USC School of Cinema-Television. He originally is from Toledo, Ohio. He is represented by the Endeavor Talent Agency. Eric Kripke is a millionaire playboy director who solves baffling crimes in his spare time."

His two films on IFILM:

• Battle of the Sexes. "What women really do in the ladies restroom."


• Truly Committed. "When a sickeningly sweet couple are cruelly separated by fate, they go to extreme and occassionally murderous ends to get back together. Based on a short story by Richard Matheson." This film is sheer joy. Extremely well organized, it flows like champagne and made me laugh like a maniac.

Posted 6:46 AM by Jian Shuo

"Net Send" - Yet Another Type of Spam

There is a hot discussion over whether use "NET SEND" command to send pop-up advertisement to other's computer is considered spam or not.

SPAM IS A BIG HEADACHE FOR EVERY ONE ON THE NET.

"The activities of a small number of people are becoming a bigger problem for the Internet." via Fight Spam on the Internet

Recently, I found another form of spam, which is becoming more and more popular: NET SEND SPAM.

What is NET SEND SPAM?

It works this way: on any networked Windows computer, anyone can type the following command in command line window:

NET SEND 127.0.0.1 Hello

A message box will appear with the greeting word "Hello". Looks interesting, isn¡¯t it? However, if you change the IP address to any other valid IP address and change Hello to your advertisement, the IP address owner will receive it. Moreover, a simple script can send the same message to thousands of IP addresses, or millions of, if the sender wants.

Still sounds interesting? Not at all! I don't want this to inspire anyone to do it. Never do it and never give it a try. I am the angry person here who is fighting back with this kind of spam - NET SEND SPAM.

Net send spam under spotlight

Now Mr. Yan, who owns http://bestyan.vip.sina.com has come on board of the Net Send Spammers. Every two or three days, this guy will send Windows message to my networked computer in my home. I may be working or reading news or composing a weblog - no matter what I am doing - chances are, a gray dialog box pops up and says:

Message from ZMZ to 211.161.107.*** on 2002-9-22 23:28:40

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX http://bestyan.vip.sina.com XXXXXXXX

(Note: XXXXX is garbage characters that I cannot read on my computer)

It is annoying. It made me angry after I received six of such messages. I am almost mad after I receive more than ten of such messages. However, Mr. Yan seems to be a very good evangelist for his web site and does not care too much about my feelings. Later, I found he does not care about the feels of thousands of people. Keep reading to know how many people were affected...

Finally, after six invitations, I decided to visit this web site.

Visit the site

It is a normal personal web page. The owner seems to be fond of poems. It lets me feel not THAT bad since it is not a commercial site.

This guy has a guestbook too. I checked it, and found there are some one already yelling there for the spam they received. Some people said:

Please stop prompting your site using this kind of spam message

Some said:

I am in Korea. I cannot read the characters you sent to me, but I can see the web site address. I am feeling angry since you sent this message to me

I also posted a long message (half screen long? Maybe) to describe the feeling when I receive this message and asked him not to do that. In my post, I also quoted Mark Bernstein's suggestions on bloggers:

Though you write with passion about things that matter greatly, always remember that it¡¯s a big world, filled with people and stories. Don¡¯t expect the world to stop and listen

It worked. Within five minutes, my post was deleted from the guestbook, along with other negative posts.

To be honest, I was really shocked when I see people doing this:creating a web site; send messages to thousands of people, millions of, maybe; force them to read; DELETE posts on his personal guestbook when he doesn't like.

I posted for the second time. This time, I added a note:

This message is deleted by our honored web owner, just as others who protests for his spam. I believe this message will be deleted again, just want those who saw this to know what happened.

What I expected is true. It is deleted within six hours.

Now, on bestyan's guest book, there are still 21 entries. I found the webmaster will delete anything negitive and leave those compliments. It is bad. Really bad.

I know I can stop any message like this by stop the Messenger service in my computer. But I'd like to be involved in further spam and see how it evolves and how bad it will be.

Would you suggest what we can do to fight against NET SEND SPAM? Write your comments here.

Update

• Stopping Net Send Spam Nov 7, 2002


• Fighting Back for NET SEND SPAM Nov 20, 2002

Windows needs to write a new toggle to the net messenger that only allows net send messages from others people on the network. That way, it can still be used for real networjk announcements/emergencies (network going down in 5 minutes, building on fire, etc) but not for spam. Just a thought. Something like "net messenger localonly"
Posted by: Robert Slater on November 6, 2002 12:54 AM

Brian McWilliams, a nice reporter at Wired.com has written an article called "Spam Masquerades as Admin Alerts" one month ago on "Net Send Spam".

On the private email discussion with him, he pointed me to a URL that blocks the Messenger Ad.

I checked the web site and don't want to pay for the money.

My reason is that it is OK for most people to turn the Messenger Service off without much problem. Corperate users may have been protected by firewall so they won't receive this kind of Ad. Even if the firewall is not well configured, to add a filter in firewall is much cheaper that to buy everyone the software. Those who are most affected are home users. They connect to Internet via broadband, DSL, dial-up. For them, the administrator won't send any message like "network going down in 5 minutes", "building on fire" to them. They don't use printer this way too. So simply turn off the Messenger service.

On Windows 2000 or XP, Start -> Run -> "Services.msc" -> Messenger -> Disable.

Let me know if any of you have better solutions.
Posted by: Jian Shuo Wang on November 6, 2002 09:39 AM

Not a better, per say, solution than Jian Shuo Wang's but another simple and free solution for home users to shut down the messenger service is to open a command prompt Start -> Run -> cmd.exe then type the following "net stop messenger" after which you'll see "messenger service is stopping".

To start it again for any reason open the command prompt again and type "net start messenger"

This is the equivalent of what Jian Shuo Wang's suggestion.

I have had alot of customers call me regarding the abuse of this feature hopefully MS fixes it soon, i like one of the ideas on this page, i think the messenger service should only have ever been for local network machines.
Posted by: Docslax on November 18, 2002 01:35 AM

Docslax,

Thanks for your information about the alternative way to disable Messenger service. I have added your comment into my steps on here
Posted by: Jian Shuo Wang on November 19, 2002 02:32 PM

OK, so this takes a few mins and probably only works on XP but it's a start.

On your dial up connection you have an internet connections firewall tab.

click this and block access to port 18 on both tcp and udp.

This will allow local admin alerts but block internet alerts.

No need to buy additional software just use what microsoft supplies.

Regards

Rich
Posted by: Rich Tolley on November 21, 2002 09:11 PM

Rich,

Good point. Enabling a firewall is definitely a good way to protect. I have addressed this in my later article here

It is interesting that you metioned port 18 for UDP and TCP. Would you please explain why we need to disable port 18? Based on my knowledge, the spam is using port 35, 37 and 39 instead of 18. Thanks for sharing.
Posted by: Jian Shuo Wang on November 22, 2002 10:17 AM

I have seen everything now. We have people that do not like eMail advertising and now they do not like a simple pop-up! Didn't they teach you in school to CLICK YOUR DELETE Key or that little x that is in the top right hand corner of the pop-up.

So, what do you do when you go to your mail-box outside of your home? Do you beat up the postman when he delivers a piece of junk mail or do you go to court because you received the latest sales flyer from Radio Shack or maybe you call ABC and NBC when your favorite movie is on TV and here comes a commercial. I think not! This whole Spam Issue makes me sick and you should be ashamed of yourself.

Let people advetise...there is nothing wrong with it...it is how you got your website on one of the top search engine pages....OH!, Maybe you forgot that!!!

Apparently you have way to much time on your hands to even think about putting others down for achieving more out of life.

It is simple....There are lot's of people on the Internet that are trying very hard to earn a secondary source of income while other people do absolutely nothing to help themselves to earn more money throughout the year.

If you are going to keep complaining about SPAM,

which NET SEND is NOT...DAHH!....at least have some common sense solutions to it all.

Please Remember to bring a SHOT-GUN with you the next time you are driving in a city and you see a sign on a building that is advertising that particular business and then take perfect aim and blow a whole in it. This way you can go to jail for a while and leave hard working people alone.

Get the point!

PS...How long will you leave this message on your board?
Posted by: Marketer on December 20, 2002 02:17 PM

Full text of my reply can be found here

Thanks to all who posted. I was being plauged by messanger service webpopup. Seeing these dialoge boxes pop-up from out of nowhere gave me quite a scare. I thought my PC had been pooched by some bad shareware. After reading through the posts I realized it was just some lammer and company invading my personal space.

Was wondering... If I have the IP of the lame-ass University who sent this out could I then Spam them back?
Posted by: InXS on December 23, 2002 11:10 PM

Hello "Net Send" Fans...LOL,

It seems as though the Host of this site: Jian Shuo Wang, seems to think that I was a maybe a bit brash in my PRO - Net Send Letter that was posted on December 20th.

Jian's Reply:

It is true that I, and most of us, accept commercial on TV. Although nobody turned on TV just for commercial, we can accept it since it is still reasonable for the advertiser to pay for the movie. We see the movie since someone paid. It is the same for junk mail in my mailbox - I mean post-mail box.

END COMMENT

Contrary to popular belief, the Program to run a Net-Send Advertising Campaign is expensive to purchase and it is even more expensive to purchase a campaign of this nature through a third party to let them send it out for you.

So, in comment to your thoughts. This is in fact PAID ADVERTISEMENT! The cost of the program, set-up time, ad-trackers, auto-responders, and ultimately the time factor and band-width the system uses. I could really go on for a while

on the subject of (who is paying for what) but I will be nice and refrain from getting political here.

Additional thoughts: When I turn on my computer and log in through Internet Explorer or Aol or Compuserve, I ALWAYS have to delete all of the pop-up ADS that screem across my screen the first 15 seconds of signing on. I am sure this also happens to you and millions of others each day.

Question? Do you send complaints and threats to those ISP companies or do you just accept it? The answer is that you accept it becuse it is now considered normal...just like TV Commercials, just like Junk Post-Office snail-mail Delivery, just like UGLY Bill Boards on the outside of a traditional Business.

We must all learn to recognize that the Internet is now becoming a Traditional Business and will be here till the end of time.

People griped about ads going to their eMail Boxes and now we have a new definition for the word "SPAM" instead of luncheon meat. We also have another called "UCE" or Unsolicited Commercial EMAIL. The GOVERNMENT has stepped in and said that EMAIL ADVERTISING is not a good thing. There is no standard of Law nor any common law over this subject. It is simply the bigger ISP's that are scaring the little program owners with threats of blocking their servers out.

It makes me laugh when somebody that lives in Califronia threatens to call the Law on somebody that lives in Cambodia or China. It is so ignorant to think that they would have a leg to stand on! Headlines: "Man in Califronia Brings Suit to Old Woman in Cambodia that send him an email selling her recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies" Tell me this is not what is actually happening, it is true and it is truly funny to think about.

Come on people. This is not anything more than paid advertising, we just want a fair shake from the Internet Cooperate Giants that control the Internet with their HIGH - Out of our price range,

advertising prices.

Online advertising is getting very expensive and most of it makes claims that simply do not work at all.

The next time you receive a little pop-up window from one of the net-send users, please take a moment to check out what they have to offer and just consider it a commercial break from what-ever you are doing.

Also, there are a bunch of places on the Internet that you can download a tiny little program that will prevent you from ever receiving another ad of this nature again.

I hope that I was able to maybe shed some light on this subject and enable you to look through the eyes of an Online Marketer who earns just over $3,000 per month Online. This is my small income to support six children of which three are being adopted by my beautiful wife and myself.

Have a Blessed New Year!

POP-UP...LOL

Posted by: Marketer on December 27, 2002 11:45 AM

Posted 5:05 PM by Blah blah

In the same spirit as the article below, check out:

Battle of the Sexes (IFILM), a hilarious and well done short film about what women REALLY do when they go to the ladies room after meeting you.

Joe Millionaire

FOX - Romance and reality intertwine as 20 women travel to France for a whirlwind romance with a man whom they think is a dashing millionaire. What will happen when the truth is finally revealed that he is a just a regular "Joe" and his wealth is a facade? Will his true love accept him for who he is, or reject him in search of greener pastures?

As this handsome, young, eligible man begins his search for "The One," he discovers which of these women are out for true love and which are just interested in his bank account in JOE MILLIONAIRE, the new, seven-episode, unscripted drama series from the creators of the hit series Temptation Island, premiering Monday, January 6 (9:00 PM-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX.

In actuality, "Joe Millionaire" is a construction worker raised in humble surroundings with only limited financial security [$19,000 salary/year]. However, the 20 women who have been whisked off to a beautiful chateau in the French countryside believe that "Joe" has recently inherited 50 million dollars and is looking for a special someone to share his newfound wealth. "Joe," in the ultimate fantasy setting, will be introduced to women that due to his social standing he would not be able to meet in his everyday life. Among the beautiful, smart and sophisticated women gathered are a doctor, banker and business development executive.

"In a way, we're ripping the mask off the people (who sign up for shows like 'The Bachelor')," Fox reality programming chief Mike Darnell told Daily Variety. "We find out whether they're really doing this for love."
_____________
FOX releases identities of the 20 women competing on its upcoming Joe Millionaire reality series. Look at these hotties. Note that TEN out of these TWENTY women are from Southern California?

This show is every guy's revenge for all the gold-digging girls he has met. I don't think I could miss the ending of this show!

Posted 4:56 PM by Clementine

Illusions aren't real.

And I had to learn it the hard way.

Posted 6:35 AM by e*star

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I am blogging from sunny 'ol...Irvine. :) I must apologize for my absence, but I actually just recently came back from New York. Needless to say, it was a much-needed vacation, and an excellent, excellent one, at that. Visiting has made me want to move there! With all things considered, though, I know that Los Angeles is my home, at least for the next few years. Even if I wanted to, I don't think I could even survive in the city, with how expensive simple living costs are--such as rent. Anyway, the last thing I need is to get distracted from my career path. My mission, now, is to hone in on developing my skills as a broker. If anything, these are the very skills that will take me where I want to be in the future. For now, I can settle with visiting New York say, once per year. :) Patience, Esther, patience.

I had an excellent time in New York. Raymond, I know that if any of your co-writers are responsible for making you second guess making the move to Los Angeles, it would ultimately be me. Alas, my love-hate relationship with LA. But really--I swear that it is more love than hate! Really!

You can take the tone of desperation in the former pleas to whatever extent you may, but I know it would be useless to lie that I wholeheartedly love this city, and that I would never, ever leave. The summary of why I love NYC more than LA in my personal web journal touches upon a moment where while I was in New York. I came at a point where I had to explain to my boyfriend, Ian, why I disliked LA. In fact, it was while we were on the ferry to Staten Island. My qualms and even pure discontent at the city has always been a comedic topic between Ian and me, but I guess this was probably the first time where it had taken a serious tone. Specifically, "Why wouldn't I want to raise kids in LA?"

I mean, What position do I have to even answer this question? I, myself, haven't even grown up in Los Angeles. Where is my own point of reference? Wouldn't I be generalizing to say that it isn't a good place to raise kids? These are many of the questions that Ian, my boyfriend, could ask--and he did in so many words. I guess from my point of view, you could say that I might have a phobia of convenience. Of luxury. Of all things that affluence brings. This is because affluence brings spoiledness. Snobbery. It brings the "luxury" of having tunnel-vision and living the affluent life-style and not thinking of others less fortunate.

Southern California and its lack of efficient public transportation requires everyone to have a car. So, everybody does. However, this allows for making your automobile a symbol of your status--much more so than any other city. Great weather lets people own the car they want with money as the only obstacle. There's no salt in the roads to wreck or ruin your car. Rain is an infrequency. And, there's no snow. Somebody should do a study on this, but I would bet that in terms of mere percentage of yearly income, people spend more money on cars here than anywhere else. There is a lot of wealth in LA, but I doubt that it is so much more that the 3 Porsche 911 turbos I see en route to work everyday were paid in cash, or even 50% down.

In the subway of New York, I came across so many different types of people--be they different because of ethnicity, race, income, profession, you name it. I experienced 10x's more diversification riding in those subways than I ever have driving 6 miles to Beverly Hills and back everyday for work. But, that's what we do here in LA--drive where we gotta go and back with our eyes straight forward.

When I was growing up in Milwaukee, I noticed that my parents had a sort of phobia of black people. They didn't mean any ill will or anything--I just noticed that they tended to think of them in a certain way and that certain way included a kind of scaredness and plain aversion. But I had no idea why. I knew that people also classified *me* a certain way when they saw me, but all I knew was that they didn't really know me nor did they have any right to do that, either. So, I saw parallels--and the reasons why my parents and everybody who classified people of certain races in general was because of information they got from the media, advertising, plain 'ol marketing--not because of actual interaction. If it was interaction, it was very limited--such as basing your perspective of an entire race on the interaction of say, *one* person who was supposed to represent the entire race. But. How the heck were my parents to have access to more than a few black people while living in Wisconsin? How the heck were my peers, my schoolmates supposed to have interaction with more than a few Asians, or even Taiwanese Americans or Chinese Americans? I was the only one in reach, and heck. I was good at school (including math), and I played 2 classical instruments. I somewhat fit the stereotypes, although I wasn't very accommodating nor soft-spoken.

I value appreciating diversity when it is available. This means diversity and everything it brings--including culture, backgrounds, you name it. To me, it is an absolute waste when people just drive by each other day after day and really have no desire to learn about the other even though they are a part of each other's daily lives. I appreciate cultural spillover, but I guess that Los Angeles tends to strike me as a city where it happens, but not nearly as much as it should. Additionally, with the luxury factor, I don't deny that New York doesn't also have a lot of money, and *old money*, at that, but I guess factored in with the public transportation, I just love that New York doesn't necessarily allow you to shut yourself off in your own little world.

Back to when Ian and I were discussing why I wouldn't want to raise my kids in LA (after all, Ian turned out okay, didn't he?), I guess it is because I tend to think particularly about raising daughters in Los Angeles and I cringe. Yes--girls. No, not all girls I have come across are superficial and shallow. But, when they aren't, it seems very much against the norm. With all the pressures in society--yes, the media--that say that a woman's worth is *largely* based upon how good she looks, not on what she can do, I have come to conclude that LA, combined with its attention to image, is probably the city that most emphasizes this. Again, I am speaking of my own phobia. This is my issue--that I hate those traits so much that I would actually run away from them when it comes to raising my kids.

Los Angeles has *many* resources that are valuable to me. I just think that they are valuable to me only after having already established who I am and where I stand on the large issues. Not when I am responsible for establishing those things in my children.

Then again, maybe I am just a sheltered, midwestern girl at heart.

*e

Posted 10:10 AM by Blah blah

Merry Christmas!

Listen to these music clips from classic movies.

Posted 1:11 PM by jc

Aggressive Elevator Ettiquette

Like many young professionals, I’ve a job in which time is of consequence. This means I hurry to and fro. When my duties take me to another floor, I’m often forced into an elevator.

Given that I spend time on ten different floors at work, I’ve learned to jockey aggressively for elevator position. It can mean the difference between having lunch or having a Snickers. So I’ve a few tips for the walking weary.

Stance and body position are all-important. The knees must be bent. Sharp elbows are a plus, and shoulder angle can’t be overlooked. Placing your shoulder slightly in front of the next fellow allows for first crack at the door.

Stand to the center of the elevator, regardless of how few people are with you. This invasion of personal space causes others to press against the walls. With your knees bent in the “triple threat” position, you’ll be the first one out.

Look down after pressing the button for the desired floor. This prevents social propriety from forcing you to hold the door for latecomers. Minutes can be saved with this technique. Plus, fewer passengers means fewer stops.

Glaring at those who make inappropriate use of the elevator benefits the workplace at large. Do it for the team. Those who travel just one floor without good reason should immediately feel the icy stares of others. A loud sigh when the button is pressed by a guilty individual can also be beneficial. If you happen to be bigger and stronger than the chap, consider swearing under your breath and grinding your teeth. Be menacing.


When used in combination, these tactics allow for maximum elevator efficiency. Which, of course, has never matched that of the stairs.

Posted 10:08 AM by Blah blah

Removing Posts

For privacy reasons, from now on I have decided to remove certain posts after a couple of days or so. Like my Monday post. That was more me talking to myself than to you. So read up or miss out. This will let me be more frank and open, yet you will have to be more alert and reactive. Limited shelf life for the sensitive stuff. Because I have no idea who is reading this.

Posted 9:53 AM by Blah blah

I'm Moving. Kevin Smith. Loveline.

My housemate and I will start moving today. He just bought a second house. He will rent out this current townhouse and we're moving into this new single family house within one week.

Check out the site of Kevin Smith and his friends: View Askew. Smith is the very funny writer and director of Generation X type of films like Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy (with Ben Affleck), Dogma, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. His latest film is Jersey Girl.

I've never seen his films, but based on this website, Smith is brilliantly hilarious. Profane and irreverent and sometimes borderline offensive, he pushes the envelope of creativity with punchy, rat-tat-tat dialogue. Check out their Internet message board, where Kevin Smith himself often posts and answers your questions.


Check out all his video clips and articles here at The Press Room. Everything here made me either laugh hysterically or think, including:

His "Roadside Attractions" reports for Jay Leno and the Tonight Show. VERY funny.

His Jersey Girl Diary, almost a blog of his shoot of his latest film, with Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, and Liv Tyler (also in Lord of the Rings).

Kevin and Jen (his wife) on Loveline, the national radio show with Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew that covers sex and puberty issues in detail. VERY funny and enlightening. This is a great show period, by the way, if you want to hear teens and young people talk frankly about their sexual and other common problems. Dr. Drew provides the level-headed medical view, while Adam provides the streetwise, funny, party boy view. It's a great combo.

Kevin's First Kiss with His Wife Jen (done in comic book form). This is a very sweet story of how they met!

Posted 8:04 PM by Blah blah

Boy, this certainly hits home. My pastor friend, who started this church over two years ago, was forced to end it when attendance and funds dropped. God is not protected from recession.

Recession tests houses of faith (San Jose Mercury News). "Congregations, donations decline as jobs disappear."

Posted 7:53 PM by Blah blah

Fascinating!

New Challenge for a Surgeon Turned Senator (NY Times):

"The 1994 election was the year of the anti-politician, a rough and angry campaign season when incumbency and seniority suddenly became profound liabilities. It was, in retrospect, the perfect political climate for Dr. Bill Frist, a heart surgeon and utter political novice....

He did win, of course, and it was the beginning of an extraordinary political ascent one not unlike that of his friend and ally in the White House, President Bush, who was also elected to office for the first time in 1994. Then and now, in his emergence as the likely next majority leader, succeeding the embattled Trent Lott, Senator Frist has benefited from being in the right place at the right time. But he has also shown traits that have eased his path, like the ability to plunge into a subject with a surgeon's focus, a hunger to win and a powerful ambition....

Even in a city of ambitious workaholics, Mr. Frist [50 years old] stands out. He is said to prosper on very little sleep, and friends like Mr. Alexander report getting e-mail messages from him that were sent at 1 or 4 a.m. He recently told an orientation session for incoming senators that they could get much more work done if they kept surgeons' hours and were ready for duty at 6 a.m. Mark Tipps, his 1994 campaign adviser and first chief of staff, said: 'He's a very focused person. This is a guy who runs marathons, does triathlons, flies to Africa and does surgery on people who don't have physicians.' "

Posted 12:24 PM by Anonymous

the notion of human mirrors

Recently, my girlfriend, Hui, and I were discussing the possibility of moving back to New York from our current home in San Francisco. I couldn't imagine a better place to live than the Bay Area, but she really wants to live in NYC at least once in her lifetime. Hui also has many close friends on the eastcoast from her high school, university and post-bac time periods... plus her parents will be living in NY state.

On the other hand, I went to high school in Manhattan and I lived in Greenwich Village, two blocks from Washington Square Park. Most of my friends from high school never left the 5 boroughs (opting to attend N.Y.U.) and many of my college friends moved down to NYC to find work, go to grad school, etc., so I have a lot of old ghosts roaming the streets of NY. There's a lot of pain in that city.

I suppose that a lot of my reluctance to move back relies upon the notion of mirrors. When I am around certain people, I am strongly reminded of how I was when I knew them in the past. I may look upon an old friend and what I see is myself in high school or in college with all the faults, insecurities, and ignorance that I thought I had transcended. The bridge of time shortens. The gaps grow smaller.

(There's a similar phenomenon when my entire family is around each other for a week or more. We revert back into our old family roles. It's pretty awesome to see adults in their 20's, 30's, and 40's assume their old roles as teenage siblings... the rebellious older children... the middle children... the baby.)

Now I know some of this can be attributed to my own narcissism and a slice of uncertainty. In the past, I've been extremely gifted with the ability to walk away from relationships and easily make new ones... but maybe it's time to move on, step away from the mirror, and confront my old friends as friends and not as ghosts of the past.

Posted 10:16 AM by Blah blah

Radio Drama: Joe Frank Revisited

I wrote about Joe Frank over a year ago. He is the best radio dramatist I've ever heard, dark and riveting, starkly original. Hypnotic. If you've never heard radio drama before or think it's just for old people, here's a treat for you.

Listen to him on the Net at his new site, JoeFrank.com (you need RealPlayer to hear him).

Tell me what you think. I love it.

Posted 5:09 PM by Blah blah

Cool Science Software Links

I just explored some very cool science/math links. Check out:

GalaxyGoo. They have great interactive web animations and talk about using webMathematica.

ActionScript Toolbox, a great site with tutorials about Macromedia Flash's scripting language (actionscript), as applied in Flash 5 and Flash MX. Lots of cool graphics and animation here.

Robocode, from IBM alphaWorks. "Build the best. Destroy the rest. In Robocode, you'll program a robotic battletank in Java for a fight to the finish. The game is designed to help you learn Java, and have fun doing it... from a simple 10-line robot to a very sophisticated, intelligent robot that destroys the competition!" They have something called the Robocode Rumble where you enter your Java robot into battle with others' robots and compete for prize money. Robocode Help.

Sorry for the quick entries. I'm still down with flu. Grrrr. Is anyone reading this? Or did everyone leave for their hometowns already?

Posted 12:45 PM by Blah blah

From A to Zeppelin, Lord of the Rings makes its mark on pop culture
Thu Dec 19,11:19 PM ET

By ANTHONY BREZNICAN, AP Entertainment Writer

LOS ANGELES - Deep into their quest to destroy the evil One Ring, the hobbit Samwise Gamgee asks his friend Frodo if people will ever write "songs and tales" about their adventures.

The line from the new film version of author J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," is a wink to fans who already know the answer.

Over the decades, Tolkien's world of elves, wizards, monsters and magic has provided gothic inspiration for Stephen King thrillers, Led Zeppelin songs, and games and paintings while spawning countless sword-and-sorcery novel followers.

"Tolkien would be delighted by the popularity of the work, even though he might be off-put by the way some have interpreted it," said Mike Foster, a literature professor at Illinois Central College and spokesman for the Tolkien Society historical group.

For instance, "The Lord of the Rings" is regarded as an influence on some rock music of the 1970s.

Direct Tolkien references exist in Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On," "Misty Mountain Hop" and "The Battle of Evermore" and Rush's "Rivendell," which was one of the writer's elvish cities.

"Led Zeppelin would not have been to (Tolkien's) taste, but they were trying to evoke the same sort of mythic 'hammer of the gods' feeling," Foster said.

"T'was in the darkest depth of Mordor/ I met a girl so fair/ But Gollum, the evil one crept up/ And slipped away with her," read singer Robert Plant's lyrics to "Ramble On."

The line is sung from the point of view of Frodo, with the "girl" apparently representing the ring he plans to destroy. Mordor is the sinister kingdom where the ring was forged and Gollum is a crazed creature corrupted by the relic's magic.

"The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, partly inspired by such tales as "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and "Beowulf," was published between 1954 and 1955 and surged in popularity during the late 1960s and 1970s.

Director Ralph Bakshi transformed the first two installments — "The Fellowship of the Rings" and "The Two Towers" — into the 1978 animated film "The Lord of the Rings," filming real actors performing the motions and then drawing over those frames to create the cartoon characters and fantasy landscapes.

The final installment, "The Return of the King," was made into a TV cartoon in 1980 by directing team Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr., who had also animated Tolkien's "The Hobbit" two years earlier.

The BBC turned out a well-regarded radio play version in 1981, with Ian Holm, who plays avuncular Bilbo in the new films, starring as Frodo. Plans for a live-action movie, however, were abandoned until the late 1990s.

After Tolkien's death in 1973, a wave of authors began competing for the attention of his fantasy fans, among them Terry Brooks with the "Sword of Shannara" series, Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time" books and Dennis L. McKiernan's "Mithgar" stories.

"Tolkien just launched a whole plethora of authors into the fantasy line and I'm one of them," said McKiernan, whose latest book is a fairy-tale retelling "Once Upon a Winter's Night."

His first book, "The Silver Call," was conceived in 1977 as a fan's follow-up to the Tolkien saga, with McKiernan setting his story in the Mines of Moria after "The Lord of the Rings" characters escaped it.

"We went into negotiations with Tolkien's estate for three years and couldn't get anywhere," he said. "So my publisher said, 'Make the story your own,' and I went back and created my own world. ... But it started as an homage."

The role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons had a similar genesis, with creator Gary Gygax and friends originally playing it with Tolkien elements before creating an original magical universe when the game was marketed publicly.

In turn, Dungeons & Dragons and Tolkien have gone on to influence such video games as Gauntlet, Diablo, EverQuest, and Baldur's Gate. There are two new video games based directly on "The Lord of the Rings," one from Vivendi Universal based on the Tolkien texts and another from Electronic Arts based on the Peter Jackson movies.

Even King, the world's best-selling fantasy and horror author, has acknowledged a debt to Tolkien, saying his 1978 novel "The Stand," about a group of survivors fighting Armageddon after a worldwide plague, was an attempt to remake Middle-earth as the United States. His fantasy series "The Dark Tower," includes Tolkien references and a "Fellowship"-like adventure with monsters and magic.

Innumerable artists also have tried to capture Tolkien's words in images, notably the calendar illustrations of brothers Greg and Tim Hildebrandt and dozens of recent hand-painted sculptures by Sideshow Weta Collectibles, the special-effects company that worked on the Jackson films.

"The fascination with Tolkien is this intensely poetic, beautiful framework," said illustrator Stephen Hickman, whose Tolkien-themed works include "At the Entmoot," about the meeting of ancient, treelike creatures in "The Two Towers." "His characters became these archetypal, perfect characters that just continue to ring in the reader's imagination."

Posted 11:03 AM by Blah blah

See this funny spoof of the first LOTR movie on IFILM.com: Lord of the Rings Spoof with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jack Black. Not for kids!

The Two Towers

I saw The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers this week, and being a lifelong Tolkien geek, of course I'm very biased in favor of this stunning, incredible movie. Funny story...Line of the Geeks: Waiting for The Two Towers.

Wonder how they created those awesome computer graphics battle scenes? Check out these video interviews and explanations on the official LOTR site.

While the first movie had more character development, this one was heavy and fast-paced action. Gollum was the best CGI character I've ever seen. The actor Andy Serkis did an outstanding job voicing and physically acting as Gollum. He talks about the role.

And talk about the truckloads of meaningful looks in this movie! Frodo always looks like he's about to kiss Sam. Homo-erotica.

I read the whole Lord of the Rings when I was 13, sick in bed for two weeks with chickenpox. All of you will eventually see it. Here's a user review on Yahoo! Movies that I think captures best my view about some of the changes director Peter Jackson made to the book:

Problems with The Two Towers. (Has SPOILERS! Don't read if you haven't seen the movie yet.)

I like what one user said, that "Peter Jackson does Star Wars better than George Lucas." Many thought Lucas should get off from his complacent chair and learn from Jackson how to really create an enthralling fantasy film. After watching The Phantom Menace, I didn't want to see any more new Star Wars movies.

Posted 6:36 PM by jc

Say Hi to All2Swift!

So! I’m delighted to join Tiger Café, but am at a loss as to how to introduce myself. I sought online guidance, but Blogspot appears to have done away with RG’s archives for the moment. I’ll eke out what I may, then.

I’m a Chinese-American from Arizona, a former swimmer/rollerblader/violinist/history major who left the arid Southwest to study in soggy New England. For the chance to treat ailments of the head and neck. The schooling is done; I’ve begun my residency.

I embrace pop culture, though my friends despise it. I enjoy the disparity. I’m a romantic, a sap who can’t resist the lure of action flicks. I love Austen and Amis, but have tired of post-modern lit. I’m drawn to the inherent intimacy of human interaction. Like many others in their twenties, I’ve spent the last decade seeking the One.

And last year, I found her [his wedding pix]. [Read his sweet love story of how he met his wife. -RG]

Posted 6:04 AM by Jian Shuo

Something strange and interesting

1. Microsoft.com cannot be accessed via Great Wall Broadband Network and some China Telecom users in Shanghai. It reports the same error when Google.com is banned. However, this only affects Shanghai. This has lasted for 4 days in GWBN. I am not sure if it is the preface of the another ban or just some technical difficulties with the ISP. It is strange I can access all the other website I tried, but not this one. What happened?

2. Heavy rain today in Shanghai. There is no empty taxi on the road. I walked 1 mile in the rain and catch a crowded bus to office. Actually, the concept of taxi seems different between China and U.S - especially the eastern part. I have been to Seattle serveral times and I cannot find a taxi on the road. I need to call a taxi and wait for 15 minutes to get one. But in Shanghai, taxi is everywhere - in every street and every corner of the city. If you want to a taxi, extend your arm and a taxi will stop immediately before you - about 1/5 of all the cars on the road seems to be taxi in Shanghai. That is the reason why it is so terrible when I cannot find a taxi here.

3. Too many things to do and I struggled to complete only half of the to-do-list on my PLOG (Isaac's term = paper-log = notebook). I have to complete the second half tomorrow, since it is already deep 1:30 AM in the night. Life is tough here.

Another news for me is, today, I was interviewed by Forbes magazine. The interview is also tough because most the questions are unexpected and hard to answer. [They interviewed Jian Shuo about his work for Microsoft. He was identified as a representative of the young generation of information technology people in China. What a VIP we have here! -RG]

Posted 1:59 AM by Duke

Because it's that time of year

Have yourself, a merry little Christmas.
Let your heart be light.
From now on, our troubles will be out of sight.
Have yourself, a merry little Christmas.
Make the yuletide gay.
From now on, our troubles will be miles away.
Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days, of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us, gather here to us, once more.
Through the years we all will be together,
if the fates allow.
Hang our shining star upon the hghest bow.
And have yourself a merry little Christmas, now.


I never realized until this year that Diana Krall is singing about friends. One of the main reasons I've come to love Christmas so much is that it means I get to fly home and be with my best friends. I don't know what I did wrong at Michigan (if anything), but it doesn't seem like I've got too many close friends here. And the ones who I am close to aren't really like my friends from home. And aside from the ambiguously gay guy I've mentioned before, all of my friends from Dallas are female. At Michigan I almost exclusively hang out with males. I'm not much of a hanging out kind of person, so maybe that has something to do with it. And up until this year I've always been too involved on campus to really find time to just chill at someone's house watching tv.

I've met a lot of drinking buddies and guys I can work out with, but I haven't developed a lot of close bonds. I know practically everyone on campus, but not many really know me. I was actually afraid my 21st birthday would be a bust because I wasn't sure who I could count on to make it really fun. It turned out great, but my friends that night were mostly students I had gotten to know that year through an organization I was in. People have told me college tends to be like that, especially at a school like Michigan. Everyone is wrapped up in their own world, it's cold all the time, and the midwest tends to generate odd children. Sure, ok. But still. I love going home to my friends from high school. We have a little group that is really close because my high school was healthy and normal. We had our share of angst and drama, but it wasn't anything like I've heard about from my friends at Michigan.

So I love coming home to warmth and friendship that I can't really say I've found in Ann Arbor.

For better or for worse, Merry Christmas everyone.

Posted 9:54 PM by Anonymous

Priority, My High Profile A**

Two things I've learned this past month: stress makes me angry and stress from work convinces me that I'm not cut out for the corporate world. I used to want to be a CEO, after all I have the #1 trait of a CEO: Create then delegate your creation. Meaning, I have the vision, I just want/need someone else to do all the work... I think you've met him, his name is Raven.

My program manager is not only gone for a week vacation, but she's not even my boss anymore because she's moved onto another project. Another field manager, like I are now taking on her workload. Managing people is a full time job, but now the director wants us to staff for two programs that starts the first week in January. Every time I have a meeting, This is high profile and must be priority! Then we close one subject and open another discussion on a different topic, again my director, THIS is priority, you must work on this and staff 100 stores by Friday. Yeah, Priority My High Profile A**, because it is not worth my time to be stress out over a workload that should be distributed over four people, not two.

I realize this is my time to shine... to prove to my VP and director that I can get through working on three projects and still keep my sanity. That was before we received an email from our client stating that 20% of the people they secret shopped were not where they were supposed to be. That's right, it was PRIORITY, get on the ball and call some people. Well I called and worked over 2 hours more than quitting time. I know some of you (shut up Raven) guys work 10-12+ hours a day; but I tell you what, work is for the birds. Get me out of this hell I call a cubical, because I'm ready to leave corporate america.

Have you seen Office Space (right)? The neighbor mentions that they are in Las Colinas, a suburb of Dallas, TX. The traffic on Hwy 114 in the beginning of the movie, the malnurious trees no taller than a one-story building, the cubicles, and flatness of the surrounding... that's where I work, I work in Hell called Las Colinas. I live Office Space, I am Office Space. Instead of a fax machine, a copier gives everyone nightmares. We even have a guy in the office that looks like Michael Bolton! ... he hates to be called Michael Bolton (hehe!) See why now I need to persue my creative dream of becoming a photographer? I just about had it, but Raven tries to convince me to hang out until we do move to San Francisco next year. I just don' t know how long I can take more of this "priority".

Posted 1:47 PM by Anonymous

10, 000 TEARS AND NONE THE RICHER

Hey guys, I’ve dug up a journal entry from years past. You guessed it, I'm not feeling inspired to write and I'm not about to force myself to write something either, at least not today. This particular journal entry was the first one written after I moved [far] away from home- a particularly traumatic experience. All things considered, I was embarrassingly vulnerable at the time and had very mixed feelings about the sordid departure as I was embarking on a new unplanned phase of my life. At the time, I was escaping attack from every which direction you could imagine. It was a period when everything fell apart and I was just trying to outrun my misfortunes...I have been with R (my current SO) for at least 3 years now. And, no, I've never taken antidpressants, nor will I ever. If you're a daddy to a sweet adorable little girl, this may enlighten you a little bit about how a daughter will break a father's heart in time and how much it hurts, though she may not express it physically - all grown up.

On a side note, prayers for Key. God bless her heart, her soul and her family.

Now indulge yourselves. I had to unlock my diary for this sucker.

Saturday Oct. 14, 2000. 5: 39 a.m.
It’s been a month, hasn’t it? And too much has happened and I feel it is a crime for me to have been so lazy.
Well, I’ve passed the initiation phase of a relationship and now I fear that I am growing more and more attached. Just today, after R left for his biweekly 5-hour drive to see his son and attend to business at the other auxiliary offices, I felt almost sad as I waved him off from our 3rd floor window. Was I getting so soft?
I meant to write about Pierre Trudeau, our beloved 15th Prime Minister, who passed this month. I had thought up such an honorable farewell poem expressing my gratitude for feeling as though I somehow belonged as a minority in what seemed to me, a whitewashed country. His vision of Canada as a leader, or my interpretation of it, seemed somewhat idyllically spanned to include me in it as one of his own. I felt a part of a nation and his warmth certainly made me believe that equity stands firm within him. I felt like he was on my side and I rooted for him, though Trudeau mania was gone before my time. Like his son Justin said in his last words at the public funeral procession in Montreal, “Rest, for you have earned your sleep.” Indeed he has. Pierre was 84? years old. I feel awful that Sarah (his illegitamite daughter) has lost her father at such a young age. I hope that his absence is replaced by a genuine surrogate parent to nurture whatever emotional anomalies she may encounter along down the road. As for the boys, they’ve got a tough act to follow and I feel for them in that respect as well. I know what a load of pressure that can be and then to be scrutinized nationally and to a lesser degree, internationally, boy, I’ll pass.
On a more selfish note, I’ve been seriously considering a doctor visit for a therapist referral. I think it may be time to be prescribed for my mental debunk. It's hearsay, but I may be suffering from a mental disease and pills really aren’t such a bad idea? So I’m a little low on seratonin, I don’t think it would hurt to give these artificial wonder drugs a try. At this point, after 3 years of non-accomplishments, I think the suggestive possibility of relying on drugs is welcome in my sanctuary. I’ve had enough of this blundering wave-it’s time for lift-off. So I’ll hide them from R. Denial shall bite me no more. So I accept the failure to make myself naturally happy and I take the pills. Go against society’s insult to popular belief that there are sad people for no real apparent reason, get artificially stimulated and move on. You can have everything and still be sad. So it is a disease. I’m mentally diseased.
On another note, my progress in *Narnia is nothing short of mediocre. I haven’t found a decent job yet since I got here and part of the reason was because of my slow adjustment to being alone and finally parent-free. I have cried in shame, guilt, relief and sadness for my far-away family many times after the telephone was hung up. It’s true I miss them, but I wouldn’t go back. It would be 10 life squares back on the board and one penalty miss a turn. Forget it, I could never catch up in this game where I feel as though I am already so many squares behind. O.k., so R and I are in a 1 bedroom, 3 floor apartment in northeast *Narnnims. Of which we occupy rooms behind door #305. (equaling 8-for the number conscious individuals like R) The significance? Who knows. We almost have a routine now, except we are still waiting on a job for me. I admit that my job search effort is not as thorough as it could be, but there are my excuses of the 'emotionally traumatic' nature. The other day I received an e-mail from my brother writing under the false name “Saint” that he suspected my father was drinking again because he had thrown out some chardonnay bottles and I broke down in front of R’s eyes. He witnessed a real “Mira” moment. Me, silently dealing with the breakdown process-first the shock and the blur of the blinking cursor, then the slow methodical reminder that someone is watching…so the suppressed display of emotions, the physical displacement to get away and be alone…then the intense torrent of 'flood thoughts’ that overtake your body and propel you on a journey to question, assess, decess, articulate, then lay blame... and finally to bow out and allow the suffering to complete the grand cathartic show. Ultimately, I paid the price and cried for my father’s self-destruction and how it hurt me that I may be the root of his descent to end mortality. He quit drinking cold turkey at a real low point after being diagnosed with diabetes; a trade-off for what he had secretly feared might have been some kind of fatal cancer. His liver was a mess. That day I sang my tenfold choir Messiahs and Hallelujahs to the heavens, my 20 years of prayers had been answered. Though he still smoked cigarettes.
In any case, I was hurt because of our tarnished relationship and how I felt responsible for his pain. It killed me that it was this way and how he was reacting to our sour result. I didn’t want it to affect him. So late night, the rented movie went ignored and I lay in bed trying to breathe from all sinuses and cavities freshly swollen shut from localized edema and fluid overflow and tried to stay head above the water that was floating my heart up to my throat within the parameters of my rib cage. I was drowning in my own remorse and I could feel the suffocation wreaking havoc on my panic button. My thumb went numb with tingles and I shook it violently in anguish. So on it went as I struggled to breathe calmly from my mouth…that chest not inflating much less deflating properly. Eventually, I fell asleep with R’s surely arm patting me from time to time…trying to laugh off the remnants of that painful ordeal. So I fake laugh with him over light jabs and fake tickles, believing still that laughter is the best medicine. Something my father anonymously taught me in his wake.
I continue on, bravely. As weak as I am, each day at a time, now getting desperate for a suitable job while R continues on with his share of stresses, as my #1 supporter and lover. God I love that man. I am in charge of mess duty. My Korean cookbook arrived in the mail yesterday and I STILL can’t cook. Keph said the other day, ‘Man Work, Man come home, Man HUNGRY’ tell me about it. My man comes home, his throat dried out, lunging for food. He’s very patient. I am very lucky.

Posted 7:44 AM by Blah blah

I'm sick today. Chris has a fever too. Someone I met this weekend must have had the flu. Damn. :(

Key's grandpa just passed away. Please send her your hugs and condolences. :(

Posted 9:13 PM by Anonymous

Choose a College, Choose a Life

Reposted from my journal because so many more eloquent words have been written about the past weekend already. I'm sure Raymond will write a good entry about the rest of the weekend which we essentially shared. It was great finally meeting our fearless leader and I look forward to more meetings in the future.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort. ~George Bernard Shaw

One of the main items on the agenda this weekend in San Francisco was to visit two of the potential colleges Mona might attend to study photography. On Friday she had an appointment with the San Francisco Art Instittue and Saturday was a tour with the Art Academy of San Francisco.

As you can see from my previous journal entry I was really not too enthused about having to tag along for these interviews. I was thinking to myself: "why can't she just do this herself, its her future". However, I should have been thinking: "We need to figure this out together, its our future." At times I have relapses and forget to think in terms of "us". I know, I know that's lesson number 1 in relationship school. But I'm a man, I'm allowed mistakes occasionally.

Friday was horrendous, it was pouring down rain in San Francisco that day, the worst storm they had experienced all year. Our flights were due to arrive at the same time, about 10 am, giving us ample time to get to the interview from the airport. Mona's flight arrived on time because she left so early but my flight left an hour late because an FAA enforced delay and spent another hour circling because of the same delay. As the captain announced we were running out of fuel and would have to land one way or another he also told us he was going to land us in Oakland and we would fuel up and then land in SF. I was thinking, great I could get out of the plane and walk to SFO faster than that will happen. Thankfully, the tower squeezed us in at the last minute.

The campus at SFAI was very beautiful and the art work displayed there was superb. However I was less than impressed with the members of the faculty we met there. He was an old man, soft spoken, with a very limp hand shake and I suspected him to be gay. He asked a visibly nervous Mona a few questions and immediately passed judgement on her. When asked why she wanted to study photography, she said quite few things one of them being "I would like to make money in this field". After that the guy did nothing but try and push her off to another school! He didn't even bother to ask her more questions or explore her personality and only flipped through her portfolio out of obligation rather than with the critical eye of a professor examining a potential student.

Apparently SFAI is a very "ivy league" school that teaches art for art's sake. You go there to learn to "express" yourself. Apparently these same people that have learned to express themselves have also learned something far more valuable, how to live in this world without an income. Heaven forbid an artist should actually seek to make money off his/her work to put food on the table and a roof over their head. That was a foreign concept.

Throughout the entire interview I really want to just tell the guy how full of shit he was. He was a horrible salesman, and obviously had never lived a day in the real world. I pretty much kept my mouth shut for fear that I might initimidate him on the chance that Mona might be reading this experience differently and actually want to go to this school. It would have made my day by strangling this guy from across his desk.

However, we did learn a few things from the experience. First, different schools have different focus. Some focus on the purely fine art aspect of things (art for art's sake), while others take a more realistic approach (be creative but make a living). The former is not the kind of school I want to deal with. Secondly, he taught us that a portfolio should be presented to target a specific thing much like a resume. Mona didn't know this, she just picked 20 of her best photos covering a wide range of areas and didn't tailor it specifically for the school.

I guess I just won't ever understand these "artist" types, the world of business is too different. People like this would get chewed up and spit out on the first day of the job in my field.

On Saturday we headed out for the Art Academy of San Francisco. I liked this place much better from the very first impression. They were much more marketing oriented, the people talking to you actually wanted you to come to their school. They didn't hold some high and mighty attitude about it.

Secondly, they were very career oriented. If showing pieces in a gallery was your thing then they would teach you how to do that. If you wanted to go work for a firm or start your own business after graduation then they had resources to do that as well. Personally I think Mona fits somewhere in the middle of those two ends of the spectrum and this place would help her with both. They also took the attitude that not everyone is born with all the skills it takes to be a successful artist. Heaven forbid you should want to study art but not be born with an easel in your hand or something.

The tour was conducted very professionally, the students were very excited about what they were learning and the tour was informative. The facilities were pretty impressive and they even had bus transportation between their 20 campuses throughout the city. All in all they had their stuff together.

Since this was a tour there were a few other people along with us. I found it particularly interesting that we were the only ones asking questions. The other people there were either high school students their with their parents or people from community college. It reminded me of the time when I was going off to college and I was so exicted to get there that I just wanted to hurry the process along, damn the questions I would figure things out later. I soon realized that I would have done better to ask more questions before I jumped into college. Today I was the questioing adult wondering why the kids were not asking more questions about their future.

So we still have a decision to make. Part of that decision is whether to look at more schools or not. But at this point if I were in Mona's shoes I would be content going to the Art Academy. I most definitely would not pick SFAI. But, that is a decision that we must make together.

Posted 11:05 PM by Blah blah

Stay Tuned...

WOW, I've had such a busy and fun-filled three days (Fri-Sun) that I haven't had time to blog about it. Please stay tuned. I raced through this post and will revise it soon:

Friday: I went with my close Korean friend Jae to my dance class holiday ball. We did some waltz, then watched a FANTASTIC series of dance performances by my teacher's students. They had been working hard for twelve weeks to put on this show for us. Later Jae and I sat up talking late at Denny's, and I got home around 2 am. It's my last time seeing him as a "single" guy. He's getting married in Seoul next month!

Check out these dance PHOTOS of what they call "formations," from previous holiday balls. I'm learning intermediate salsa from this teacher. I was clapping like crazy and had SO much fun watching. Also, the formation girls were mostly very hot! More on formations.

Saturday: Went to San Francisco and met Raven and Mona for the FIRST TIME! Met Chris, and he took us, first for dim sum at the mouthwatering Hong Kong restaurant, Harbor Village, then on a really eye-opening historical tour of San Francisco Chinatown. I've lived in the Bay Area for decades and didn't know a fraction of the history Chris knew. This all took place in extremely heavy rain. At around 2 pm the streets got so drenched that on certain parts of the road they had mini-floods. Also, Chris showed us a hidden view of Coit tower. We drove to the top of the hill and walked down and up about SEVEN stories of stairs. They were narrow and sloshing with the pouring rain.

Raven and Mona are just like I imagined them. Very friendly, great to hang with, both idealistic and realistic. Very much perfect for living in San Francisco. I really look forward to meeting them again. And Chris, with his hyper energy and enthusisam, helped make the day for all of us. The man is incredibly sweet and kindhearted. I feel so lucky to know and have met all of them.

Read Raven's tale of this weekend.

At night, we went to Eric's house to see Vienna Teng perform. Not only that, a record number of online journallers showed up, some I hadn't seen for MONTHS. I was blown away. Almost everyone there had a personal website. Eric told me that he was impressed by how quickly "perfect strangers" who had never met physically would mingle and get comfy with each other. He said that usually in his home concerts, people come from various cliques and aren't as open to getting up and being friendly with the other groups.

Eric's blog about last night. You can see his pictures of us! In the group pic, I'm in the middle with my arm around Vienna. It's also Eric's birthday today!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Renaissance Man!

(I have Eric's permission.)

Raven's tale of the Vienna Teng night.

What a fantastic weekend! I will flesh out my stories later. Stay tuned!

Posted 10:27 AM by Blah blah

From Sandy: So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye!

Tiger Cafe, I had fun while it lasted. Unfortunately, because of my current schedule, I am unable to write anything meaningful and insightful. I've been experiencing symptoms of relapse from my depression and as a result, everything and anything is a trigger.

They say that from your most difficult hardships come inspiration. Since my diagnosis, I've felt the most inspired when depressed and I can easily find my voice through writing. At this time however, I feel that writing is tiresome and I can only find some peace of mind through distance and time. (Prozac would be great, but I don't have that either!) So I'm taking a temporary break from Tiger Cafe.

I was looking forward to sharing some of my past experiences with everyone and with anyone who needed reassurance, comfort, etc. whatever. But the timing was a little off because I've realized I am FAR from being who I want to be. BEFORE I can start to preach, I myself need to know that I am ok.

If it's ok with Ray, I'll be back when I get my refill of happy pills and once I find closure to some personal issues...

I guess this isn't really an "adios," but more like a "see ya later." I'll be lingering and visiting periodically to say HELLO. Ha, thought you got rid of me? Well I don't think so. Tiger Cafe needs a drama queen and I'm just stepping down from my throne temporarily :)

Sandy

[Come back soon, lady! Too bad you couldn't meet me last night at Eric's. -RG]

Posted 10:21 AM by Blah blah

More: Magazine for Women Aged 40 to 60

From SALTY, the supermodel blog (in Paris):

"Over 40s shunned by women's magazines"
By Mary Stevens, The Press Gazette

Women in their 40s and 50s have been abandoned by magazines which celebrate youth and fertility rather than experience, according to US publisher Myrna Blyth.

The lifestyle of women in this age group, which is a rapidly growing demographic across the world, has changed dramatically in the past few decades, but most magazines on the market alienate the Baby Boomer generation, Blyth told delegates at the Worldwide Magazine Marketplace conference.

“This is an age group that remembers the way life used to be for women in their 40s and 50s and realises that life is so much better today,” she said.

Blyth is the editorial director of Meredith Corporation’s New York magazines and four years ago she launched More, the title for women aged 40 to 60. More has doubled in circulation and revenues since its launch and now sells 850,000 copies a month.

Publishing ventures which have tried to cater for this market in the UK, such as Eve Pollard’s Aura, and Chic, have been unsuccessful, as have previous magazines in the US, such as Mirabella and Lears.

Part of the reason More has succeeded, said Blyth, is because it is celebratory. It doesn’t feature models who are younger than 40. “Part of what we wanted to say is that it is not about looking young, it is about looking good, because that is how women of this age feel. It is not about wanting to be younger, it is about wanting to enjoy life at this stage, and it is a very positive stage.”

More published pictures of Jamie Lee Curtis, the 43-year-old Hollywood actress, without any make-up, hair-styling or air-brushing. The story and pictures were picked up by media all over the world.

Blyth said that women were no longer valued only for youth and beauty. “And that is one of the great differences today. For the first time, women are valued for experience---really the first time in the history of the world.”

She denied that women stayed loyal to magazines they had read when they were younger. “Marketing used to say ‘get a consumer when she is young because she’ll stay loyal to her brand.’ Well, we always say this is the most divorced generation in history. They can change their husband---they can change their brand.”

The magazine covers health, beauty, relationships and travel. Blyth said: “One thing that is so interesting about this age group in the States---it’s the largest demographic and it is the richest demographic. That has never really happened before. This is a rare combination.”

Posted 4:24 AM by Blah blah

TV: Where the Content Creator is Rich

Hollywood's Idea Moguls, complete article from Forbes (Sept. 21, 1998):

NEW YORK - Kevin Williamson, Hollywood's hottest writer-producer of the moment, was in mid-banter when an aide popped into his office. Bob Weinstein, the powerful cochairman of Walt Disney's Miramax Films, was on the phone.

"Does he know I'm here?" Williamson asked. "Good. Tell him I'll call back as soon as you find me."

Why didn't this 33-year-old phenomenon drop everything for a studio mogul? He didn't need to. He already has Weinstein's signature on a three-year, $35 million guaranteed development deal.

Work-for-hire scriptwriter is not his job description anymore -- he's one of the powerful new breed of Hollywood talent -- a "hyphenate," as in "writer hyphen producer." In the last two years, Williamson, a onetime high school loner, has taken Hollywood by storm with a very marketable literary gimmick: self-absorbed youngsters who speak in adult psychobabble. Since 1996, when his Scream, a slapstick take on teen slasher flicks, debuted, the four movies he's written, produced, directed or just been adviser for have collectively grossed more than $500 million at the box office. Three more are in the works. Before he turns 40 Williamson will have earned more than $100 million from a 10% cut of his movie creations.

But that's not the real pot of gold. His first TV series, Dawson's Creek, is now a signature show on Time Warner's hot WB network. And before the love-tossed youngsters of that serial have moved on to adulthood, Williamson will have other fare aimed at the highly desired 18-to-34-year-old audience.

Says he, eyeing a television sitcom project: "You can make so much more money in television; it dwarfs the movie business."

He's not boasting. Nor is he miscalculating. Take a look at the Forbes Top 40 this year. Half of the top ten names on the list are creators or stars of television shows. Fifteen of the 40 are paying for their beach houses with television riches. Ten years ago there were five.

In media -- and in the general economy -- the idea is king. In films -- and even more so in television -- where increased competition has been furiously bidding up the cost of hits, content sells. Williamson himself will likely vault into the top ten in a year or two. Not bad for the son of a cash-strapped North Carolina commercial fisherman. Living in near-poverty in his teens, Williamson pounded the pavement in New York and Hollywood for acting jobs in his 20s. His first writing effort, a gory short tale of date rape and the injustice of being a teenage outsider, earned him an "F" in a high school English class. He still reads Mad magazine.

Today he's on location with the Dawson's Creek cast in the Carolinas, in the movie editing suites of Los Angeles, or in a bustling Hollywood office scribbling some new dialogue. His second hour-long series, Wasteland, premieres on ABC next year [and was cancelled January 2000]. And if the sitcom he's developing performs as well as the rest of his work, his 30% cut of receipts will be worth hundreds of millions. Sitcoms -- cheap to produce, easy to syndicate and easily digestible for impatient audiences -- are the mother lode of TV.

It's hardly high art, but in a country stocked with 37 million free-spending teens and people who just think like them, Williamson's creations are candy for television, where networks and advertisers have little appetite for anyone even remotely close to wrinkles.

These are indeed gilded days for TV's idea talent. Thank six national networks, 164 cable channels, 400 independent television stations and a digital future that promises an even greater fragmentation of the viewing audience.

In a way, it's just the concentrated payoff from an information economy, where distribution (in this case the studios and the networks) risks being commodified while the benefits of technology flow to those who own the content. That's why, down the food chain from the Microsofts and the AT&Ts, through the TCIs and newer delivery channels such as Yahoo!, big money is going looking for stuff to serve up to the world's waiting eyes and ears.

"All the networks are nothing but distribution vehicles," says Viacom Chairman and CEO Sumner Redstone. "Take away the hits and they lose money. People don't watch distribution."

Redstone would know. His Comedy Central joint venture with HBO was ailing until it started airing the hit cartoon South Park. Within a year ratings were up 30% and network subscriptions up by nine million. In the three seasons since Dawson's Creek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 7th Heaven began airing on the WB, ad revenue tripled to $300 million.

Losses will drop a third by next season.

Consider this: In just nine years as a property, the sitcom Seinfeld has netted close to $1.7 billion in profits. Cha-ching! The most profitable single piece of entertainment in history -- far more profitable than Cosby, a predecessor hit from the 1980s. More profitable than Jurassic Park. More profitable, even, than Titanic, the biggest-grossing movie of all time.

And where does all that booty go? Castle Rock Entertainment, the show's producer, and Columbia TriStar, the distributor, will share close to $1 billion. No one says the studios can't still be collection machines. But creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, who took no financial risk at all on the show, will walk off with about $500 million total. And that's after earning more than $100 million in fees during nine seasons of network production. The rest goes to the various managers who helped form the show in its early days (see box, p. 209).

Now consider this: Since it aired Cosby in 1984, The Carsey-Werner Co., the only remaining TV production company not affiliated with a movie studio, may have earned more money from television than Steven Spielberg has from 14 years of blockbusters. If not more, it's a dead heat (see box, p. 211).

So who can blame the studios for lavishing the idea-bearers with millions? A decade ago a young writer would have to work for years on a hit show like Taxi, Cheers or Who's the Boss before being allowed to "run" a program. That was then. There are now close to 80 half-hour TV programs being produced in Hollywood every year. A decade ago there were fewer than 50.

As a result young writers with little experience have been winning a kind of insiders' jackpot: $3 million-a-year guarantees plus a cut of any potential profits from shows they have yet to think of. No wonder everybody in Los Angeles is supposedly working on a screenplay (see box, p. 244).

Television drives studio profits now more than ever. Just take a look at Warner Bros., the number one television producer in the country. As its movie business suffered a precipitous fall last year, the studio was chalking up profit gains of 10% from hit shows like Murphy Brown and The Rosie O'Donnell Show.

Executives at Warner Bros. didn't talk about it, but Rupert Murdoch did. Murdoch's Twentieth Century Fox TV studio spent more than $60 million chasing television writers in 1993 so it could fill its studios with people who just might have a hit like The Simpsons in their heads.

"We've been very aggressive about buying talent," Murdoch says. "When the money from the syndication comes in, it offsets the unpredictable risk of the movie business. We view talent as our partners."

Murdoch recently negotiated a deal with David E. Kelley (creator of Ally McBeal, The Practice and Chicago Hope) that will give the offbeat writer $7 million a year, plus half of syndication profits. He once gave 60% of profits to Steven Bochco, creator of Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue. Jim Brooks' Gracie Films got a 50% cut of The Simpsons, a deal that netted the company more than $100 million.

Viacom's Redstone crows about the hundreds of millions James Burrows' Frasier is bringing in today. Thanks to the sitcom and other properties like Star Trek and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, the value of his TV production arm has doubled since 1996 to $3.3 billion.

So it's no wonder that when the government allowed them to do so in 1995, the television networks quickly began striking deals to own the shows they air, instead of just collecting ad revenue for them. It was self-preservation.

Remember the ER deal at the end of last season? When the show's owner, Warner Bros., made it clear there was no shortage of interest from the other networks, NBC at gunpoint ponied up almost $300 million a season to keep it, close to eight times what it was paying before. The network, which owns no piece of it, will likely only break even on all of its future airings. If the ratings drop when star George Clooney leaves next year, it could end up losing a fortune.

No fretting among the creators, though. Before the show even hits syndication, executive producer John Wells, creator Michael Crichton and rights holder Steven Spielberg, who bought the original idea from Crichton, will split a reported $300 million in fees between them.

"Television used to be a cozy club of insiders, but now it's scorpions in a jar," says battle-weary Don Ohlmeyer, NBC's West Coast president, as he puffs heavily on an endless string of Marlboros.

"People have reported that NBC made a $200 million profit on Seinfeld last season. Well, we didn't. The truth of it is Jason Alexander [the actor who played George on the show for a $15 million annual fee] made more than we did."

Maybe that's why creative talent from the movie business is rushing to TV. CBS Television Chief Executive Leslie Moonves recently signed deals with producers Sydney Pollack, Mark Johnson and John Lee Hancock, and former Spielberg protgs Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall.

Imagine Entertainment, the production company of director Ron Howard, is set to air its first teen drama, Felicity, on the WB this year. Brad Grey, owner of Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, says he expects to make about $8 million from the film The Wedding Singer, which grossed $116 million worldwide. But if his NBC sitcom Just Shoot Me holds up, his paycheck could be 30 times greater.

"ER opened a lot of eyes," says CBS Television President Moonves.

"Everyone saw that there is a lot of money to be made around here."

It's all happened rather suddenly. Stephen J. Cannell, one of Universal Studios' most prolific TV writers of the 1970s and 1980s, exemplifies the shift. He remembers getting $1 million a year plus a cut of the back end at his peak. His output: Adam 12, Baretta, and The Rockford Files.

The trouble was that in calculating the net, Universal was charging him for everything on the lot, including the caterers in the commissary and the tram drivers working the back lot tour. In eight years of service, he saw little more than his fee.

So in 1979 Cannell financed his own company with a $60 million line of credit and went on to produce 35 hour-long series, including The A-Team, Hunter and The Greatest American Hero. Suddenly the profits were real, but he was a little ahead of the boom and on the wrong side of the business. Cannell had no sitcoms to sell. In 1996 he sold out to New World Communications for $30 million, a modest windfall by current standards.

He's since decided that this market is too hot to let even his old shows languish in a vault. A rapidly expanding pay-TV market overseas has given life to libraries of hour-long dramas that historically had limited resale value. Earlier this year Cannell reacquired his library from News Corp., New World's parent, in exchange for an 8% distribution fee.

In August, a few days before flying off on a Westwind jet to his 150- foot yacht docked in the Mediterranean, Cannell signed a deal that brought him $5 million from a handful of European territories.

Before this gilded age of television, the creative talent was at least as good, but the opportunities for riches not nearly as great.

Norman Lear, Grant Tinker and a few other smart-minded writers were packaging intelligent comedies that spoke to a young and affluent audience that until then had been ignored by the networks. With only 3 networks to play off one another and about 50 independent stations vying for off-network syndication rights, All in the Family sold for about $400,000 an episode -- versus $6 million this year for Seinfeld, its second time around in syndication. Mary Tyler Moore, another of the golden comedies of the 1970s, generated just $120 million in syndication profit for Tinker's MTM Productions. (They didn't starve. When Lear sold his company in 1985, he and partner A. Jerrold Perenchio took home $500 million.)

But Hollywood can't necessarily celebrate today's riches as a demonstration of the creative mind as business model. What we're seeing now is not an entrepreneurial payoff so much as a windfall. Lear risked his own capital on All in the Family and the shows that followed. Today?

"There are no entrepreneurs left in this business," says Kenneth Ziffren, a partner at Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca & Fischer, an entertainment law firm. "What's entrepreneurial about taking a $5 million-a-year guarantee, plus profits?"

In fact, young writers are just waiting for lightning to strike. Matt Williams was the creator of the Roseanne show before being fired by the cantankerous star. Shortly after, Williams was hired by Walt Disney in a $10 million, three-year development deal. In nine years, his production company, the Wind Dancer Production Group, has had just one breakaway hit, Home Improvement. But with a 70% cut of the profits of the show, Wind Dancer has so far taken in $350 million.

The unabashed 47-year-old says the windfall is a boon to creativity: "I'm very responsible with other people's money, but at the end of the day, it ain't my money. That means I can afford to be a little bit bolder creatively." That's today's content tycoon: bold, brash and rich.