Spoiler alert - they die!

Could this be a sign that the decade of stupid is ending? I'll try not to be too optimistic, but certainly the inglorious death of the "cliffhanger genre" is a good sign. "Lost" couldn't offer its viewers any proof that they have been doing something useful with their time. "24" ended in some kind of anti-climax that I couldn't even be bothered with. "Grey's Anatomy", as I said before, changed its ways and learned from its mistakes. "Heroes" was simply abandoned by its viewers and canceled, and the retarded bastard child "Flash Forward" couldn't even get approved for a second season.

I have been comparing cliffhanger series to an asshole boyfriend, who instead of offering you an interesting relationship and making you feel special, keeps you constantly jealous, doesn't call you back, makes you always wonder where he is, and that's the only way he knows to keep you interested. Therefore, if our taste in television has matured enough to stay away from this kind of abusive relationship, we have a reason to be proud and optimistic.

Ode to the e-book reader

Usually when I talk about how happy I am with my Cybook, people don't understand the point of such a boring gadget - there's no colors, no games, no touch screen (some of them do have it), it costs hundreds of dollars, why can't you read on a laptop, and what's wrong with a good old-fashioned paper book anyway? Well, I'm about to explain exactly why e-book readers are so great, and why I'm so in love with mine.

Space: Remember when mp3-s replaced CDs? Remember how heavy those book boxes were the last time you moved? Now I have this thing that's 19 x 12 x 0.8 centimeters and weighs 170 grams, and a folder in my computer with a bunch of text files. No, I haven't had the heart to get rid of all my paper books yet, and of course there are the comic books, but there are no new books coming into the house, and there's always the memory of the CD shelves that are gone forever.

Comfort: This is going to sound petty, but you'll have to take my word for it - the fact that I can hold the e-book with just three fingers and turn the page without moving, that I can be under the covers in bed, hold the book through the cover and not have to take my arm out to turn the pages, the fact that I don't have to keep propping something to keep the book open, all make an incredibly big difference. Add to that the fact that e-paper doesn't flare in direct sunlight, which means that I can sit in a park or in a bus without going blind.

Adjustable text size: I work about ten hours a day on a computer. After that, even with glasses, my eyes can't focus on normal book text sizes. Between that and some attention deficit symptoms that I suffer from, there was a time when I depended mostly on audio books. The fact that now I can pick a large text size not only allows me to see it better, but it gives the illusion that the reading is going very fast, as the pages become much shorter than usual. Without the e-book I would probably have carried Anna Karenina and Moby Dick around my neck like huge millstones of shame right into the grave. Now I can happily talk about how crap they are.

Availability: I live in the third world. I speak four languages, and I like to read what I can in its original form. Most of the things I want to read are very hard to find here in stores, and many times you have to settle for the translated version. On the other hand, I can find almost everything I want in online stores and download it immediately.

So, why not a laptop, iPhone or the coveted iPad? All of them are heavier than the e-books, and I personally can't stand to read from a computer screen. Also, I don't mind admitting that if I had a choice between computer games and reading, reading would lose every time. So the low-tech is actually an advantage.
As for the people who need the feel, taste and smell of paper, to me they're like the people who miss the scratchy sound of records - their argument is completely irrational to me, and I don't know how to argue with irrational convictions.

Now I read that they have come up with the first Hebrew e-book reader. It's not the first reader that works with Hebrew, but it is the first one that has its own online store. And it's very beautiful (though I might've seen that design before), and it's a great idea. I hope it works well even though it's a prototype, and I hope that people realize how useful it can be.

Signs of madness revealed by the search history:

...and yes, I know that's spelled wrong :/

me vs the world 2

Grey's Anatomy season 6 finale

I've been watching Grey's Anatomy pretty regularly since it began, knowing that it's an awful show. If you haven't seen it, basically it's a hospital situation, in which all the doctors are all having relationships with each-other, and if a patient should manage to get their attention, it's only to symbolically push them in the rigtht direction through their confused love lives. A perfect show for the self-centered decade we live in, except that its characters are educated professional people who strive to perfection, which is actually a positve message for the youngins.

The second annoying thing about Grey's Anatomy used to be that it belonged to the cliffhanger genre, which I despise with a passion. I even stopped watching it for a while because it was taking "the doctors" half a season to realize that the ditzy blonde was acting ditzier than usual because she had a huge brain tumor (incidentally, an important lesson to all the ditzy females out there). I had to get really really bored to start watching it again.

Surprisingly season 6 brought us some improvement - they gave up on the cliffhanger style, and lost some of the more annoying main characters, which left them with the rounder and more interesting minor characters. Then the season 6 double-episode finale was just damn good.

A pissed off husband of a woman who died in the hospital comes in with a gun and for about two hours walks around shooting people at random. God knows, something I've wished on the cast of that show (mostly on George) many times in the earlier seasons. All of it directed very well, really scary and exciting, as each two or three of the characters are isolated in some part of the hospital in some insane situation. Before it all ends, they even got in a very cool speech by the crazy gun guy about how he only meant to kill three people, but darn it if the ammo wasn't on sail that day, and he couldn't resist buying a lot more than he needed.

Of course the main effect of the entire shoot-out was to give all the unhappy couples a chance to re-think their relationships and realize what their hearts really want, but because it was done so well, it didn't feel as idiotic as before.

I am very pleased. They might yet grow up to be a good show, if they don't get cancelled for their trouble.

Glenn Beck has Nazi Tourettes

Lewis Black is one of the best stand-up comics of the last years, and Glenn Beck is a stinking fascist. This week on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" Lewis Black went off on Glenn Beck's nazi fetish:

מתוך "דברים שאני שונאת" מאת אפריל פטר

כרך ב', פרק 17:י
צעירים מהפריפריה שחולמים להיות זמרים.י


פרק 14:י
אנשים שסוגדים לטינה פיי.י

Day of the stupid-looking actor on IMDB:

Earth-shattering news: Israel discovers the surgical circumcision

A few days ago, this article had me staring at the screen with my jaw hanging open for a long time. Unfortunately I only have it in Hebrew, but I need to write about it in English because I want as many people as possible to be able to read it (after all, I'm up to ten readers now, and the responsibility lies heavy on my shoulders).

The article tells that most people in Israel aren't aware of the possibility of performing their sons' circumcision in a hospital, by a certified medical doctor. This is exciting news, as the overwhelming majority of circumcisions in the country are done by a mohel, a religious man who has (hopefully) recieved the specific medical training needed to perform the ritual. Apparently the thought of taking the baby to a hospital almost never occurs to any of the proud parents:

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3884593,00.html

So, the situation is as follows: you have decided to create life, fragile and priceless. You have chosen the absolute perfect person to do this with, someone who's genes and personality you can rely on with this task of tasks. You have decided to make the necessary sacrifices of body, time, energy and finance, for as many years as it might take. You have cared for this delicate and magical creature from the time it was smaller than a grain of sand, and until the moment it was ready to emerge into the world. Now it has arrived, tender and helpless, and relying on you for everything it needs to survive.
Now, at this point you are convinced that the Almighty Creator wants you to slice a sensitive piece of this child of yours in His name. This might be an odd thing to wish on your child, but let's say that you really believe that it's the best thing to do. But why does the thought of taking him to a hosplital never occur to you? You were just in the hospital, weren't you?
No, instead you are going to invite a shaman, a primitive man who probably doesn't even believe in evolution, to perform a barbaric ritual, to put his sometimes ungloved hands on your precious little angel, to say an incantation while cutting a piece of him off, and then - just in case the whole event wasn't homoerotic and canibalistic enough - to put his filthy perverted lips on the wound and suck the blood out until it stops running. And just to add the extra touch of festivity to the occasion, you'll have all your loving family in the room to grimace at the baby and eat themselves into a coma.

As usual when I'm scared and confused, I turn to the wise men of my faith for words of wisdom and guidance. Therefore I leave you with this quote by Woody Allen, through the fictional character of Professor Levy from "Crimes and Misdemeanors":

“Now the unique thing that happened to the early Israelites was that they conceived a God that cares. He cares, but at the same time he also demands that you behave morally. But here comes the paradox. What’s one of the first things that that God asks: that God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son, his beloved son to him. In other words, in spite of millennia of efforts we have not succeeded to create a really and entirely loving image of God. This was beyond our capacity to imagine.”

And just because it would be cruel not to add them, here are the other two Levy quotes from that film, which are available on Youtube:

This one about love...


...and the voiceover of the ending:


Good night.

Roger Ebert about the new "Elm Street"

There's a good joke in Roger Ebert's review of the new and unnecessary sequel of the Freddy Krueger series:

The 2010 edition of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" is number 8 1/2 in the series. I arrive at that number not out of a desperate desire to be seeing the Fellini film instead, but because "Freddy vs. Jason" (2003) should in all fairness count for half a film on this list, and half a film on the "Friday the 13th" list.

Mention Fellini in the punchline - me likey. The movie appears to be crap.

P.S. Fellini would never use the phrase "me likey".

The most unconvincing couple in the history of sitcoms:

"Roseanne" season 4, Tom Arnold and Sandra Bernhard:

כתבת השבוע 4

האמת, אני מתה לראות:י

Iron Man 2

Above everything else, "Iron Man 2" is a beautiful film. Every frame is beautiful. A few of the scenes, the calm ones that serve as interludes, are beautiful in a stylized, clean way, maybe like a frame from "Mad Men". But this movie doesn't have many interludes, and most of its compositions are beautiful with a gritty, rich, overwhelming beauty, filled with contrasting shapes and colors that fight for your attention. Frames like this one:

The "clean" scenes are the ones that have Gwyneth Paltrow and Scarlett Johansson in them, usually together - unbelievably beautiful. The gritty scenes belong to Robert Downey Jr. and Mickey Rourke, who both look amazing. I know that they've both been to hell and back in the last few years, but they've come back as two unbelievably attractive men, and I hope that along with their apparently successful comeback, they get to enjoy their improved appearance at least as much as I do.
Side note - in the last three films I've seen him in, Rourke was wearing the same clothes, boots and beads, which leads me to think that they are his own. Like he's decided to just wear his own stuff to the set from now on, and the production people just write it into the script somehow. Works so far.

Aside from being beautiful, Iron Man 2 is filled with great actors. The main four characters are great, but so are Sam Rockwell, Garry Shandling (love you Garry!), John Slattery in a tiny-big role as Stark's father, and Jon Favreau himslef. The part of Agent Coulson, played by Clark Gregg, is so funny it should've been much bigger. Samuel Jackson shows up at some point and does what he always does, which is fine unless you're tired as hell of it like I am.

It's a hilarious film. The intended jokes are funny, the way people act are funny, even single frames are funny. The scene with the rotating thing on Pepper's desk had me crying with laughter. The exaggerations are funny - one person builds an incredibly complicated piece of machinery all by himself in order to create something that has never before existed in nature. You can get annoyed by that, but you also have to laugh.

On the negative side, the film doesn't have as much soul and story as the first one. There's almost no struggle for the characters, and nobody is fooled *tiny spoiler* by the empty threat that Tony Stark might be fatally ill. Still, we all love to see Robert Downey Jr. be all self-destructive and tortured.

To sum up, Iron Man 2 is two hours of beautiful, entertaining, non-stop action. It isn't much more than that, but it's still better than most comic book adaptations, and style-wise it stands alone.