Timothy J. Gibbons

Friday, February 8

Weekly news round-up - a regular feature spotlighting some interesting stories from the week:
Meanwhile, when county cops cracked down on the local massage parlor trade last year, they did so in a decidedly Montgomery County kind of way: by paying someone else to do the deed. While detectives waited outside establishments in Bethesda and Wheaton, informers equipped with $100 of taxpayers' money had sex with suspected prostitutes. County Police Chief Charles A. Moose justified the unorthodox investigative practice at the time, saying, "We don't want our police officers to have these values and morals."

****

"He's a real fun-loving guy who's also intellectually serious," says Larry Ingrassia, editor of the Journal's Money & Investing section. While they were posted together in the London bureau, where the ponytail-wearing (Daniel) Pearl kept a beach chair, Pearl invited some people he met on the subway to a staff Thanksgiving dinner. He also once wrote a story about sturgeon in verse; it never ran.

****

Being in high-tech journalism these days means having a lot of unemployed friends. That ensures both a lot of freeloaders at table and a steady stream of media industry rumors. Among the most intriguing, especially to out-of-work associates, are whispers of new life springing from the ashes of the high-tech media apocalypse that claimed so many jobs and whole publications over the past 18 months.

****

Because of knucklehead errors, a photograph caption in The Palm Beach Post Monday incorrectly identified one of the Three Stooges, as well as Abbott and Costello. The caption misidentified Curly Howard, at left, one of the Three Stooges, as Curly Joe Howard. Curly Howard, whose real name was Jerome Lester Horwitz, was the brother of Moe and Shemp Howard. Curly Joe DeRita was the sixth and last member to join the Stooges. The caption also incorrectly referred to Bud Abbott and Lou Costello when in fact the photo showed Costello and Abbott, at right. The errors appeared on Page 4E of the Accent section; the photos illustrated a story on the front page of Accent about movie shorts. We're pleased to note that we correctly identified Laurel and Hardy.

****

A voter fraud conviction against a former city commissioner should be nullified because the defendant's lawyer was having an affair with his client's wife, a federal magistrate said.

posted at 8:20 PM by Timothy J. Gibbons | link

-------

Thursday, February 7

Germans are insane.
No, wait, I don't really mean that. German football fans -- they're insane.
I rode the U-Bahn home last night with a gaggle (what is the collective noun for crazed football fans?) of drunken, scarf-wearing, beer-can-hoisting, song-screaming fans, obviously excited over the victory of the St. Pauli team over a club from Munich. At least I think it was a victory; I wasn't insane enough to actually begin asking the folks how the game went. It might have turned ugly.
Even before the train showed up, I knew what to expect. The train going in the other direction had been jammed with an enthusiasic bunch, who amazingly still found room to wave their scarves around. (Football fans in Germany, and I think the rest of Europe, show their solidarity by wearing multi-colored woolen scarves with their team symbols on it. Seeing just one scarfed individual always looks festive, like it's some sort of strange Christmas decoration. It loses a bit of the charm when there's hundreds of 'em.) There were other clues as well: the empty Jagermeister bottles scattered around the station, the number of security guards loitering about, the stream of people buying beers at the little kiosk.
I'm too American to really get into soccer, despite patient tutoring by various European friends. Nevertheless, when the folks in the subway car I was in started literally rocking the car as they jumped around, I joined in the singing. Yep, that's me: No. 1 fan.
Go St. Pauli ... or whoever it was who won.

posted at 7:38 PM by Timothy J. Gibbons | link

-------

Wednesday, February 6

Being able to stand only so much in the way of squeaky-voiced-former-rappers, I hied myself to an actual English movie last night, wandering into a late showing of Ocean's Eleven. I've discovered a movie theater here in Hamburg that markets itself as having original-language films: there's certainly enough English-speakers around, and I can see the point in wanting to see movies -- especially comedies -- in the native language. Of course, I was still one of the few people in the theater laughing at one joke, a gag that had obvious langauage barrier problems:
Don Cheadle (playing a black Cockney explosives experts): And if that happens, we'll be in Barney.
(blank looks all 'round): Barney?
Cheadle: Barney. Rubble. ... Trouble.
Maybe I just found it amusing after having an English roommate at Columbia -- one who would refer to people as "Me ol' china" ... china plate, mate -- an experience that convinced me that Cockney rhyming slang was clearly devised after some English hops got some funky mold on them. I mean, c'mon, they just make this stuff up.. I'm willing to bet that half of it isn't even real: They just say something like "I'm heading for the L.A." and walk out, while the people in the room sit around muttering to themselves ... LA Lakers, paper? LA Times, wine? LA, California, how's your momma? What? Then you find out the guy is going to the lake, and the door just cut off half the word.
That said, Ocean's Eleven was an amusing piece of fluff; it won't be remembered through the ages, but it provided some laughs. My only problem: Who in the world thought it was even mildly realistic to cast Julia Roberts as a woman some guy would risk $16 million for? Nicole Kidman wasn't available? Cameron Diaz? Alyson Hannigan? (OK, maybe not quite right for the part, but still ...) I'm not a Roberts hater, although she wouldn't be my first choice for the role, but on top of everything, the costuming people or somebody obviously did have it in for her, because she looked truly unattractive for all but five minutes of the flick. I wouldn't say she's on my top-ten list, but usually she's better-looking than here.
The rest of the cast worked well; Andy Garcia was excellent, and the criminals managed to break into a place with a motion-sensitive floor and didn't hang upside down from wires attached to the ceiling -- amazing when you consider how often that cliche's been repeated since Mission: Impossible.
Overall, I'd give it 3 1/2. (Like you care. The films been out for, what, two full months now? If you were going to see it, you already have.)

posted at 8:58 PM by Timothy J. Gibbons | link

-------

Monday, February 4

The myth of European educational superiority was brought to a crashing halt this weekend, part of which I wiled away by watching a German game show. I was on the verge of some kind of seizure after staring, dumbfounded, while a contestant hemmed and hawed for two minutes and 17 seconds (yes, I timed him) over where the Renissance started.
And then he got the answer wrong.
Now, c'mon, I'm not expecting much -- but when you have a three-question multiple-choice quiz and you end up saying Spain, for goodness sake, that's when you head off back behind the TV studio and shoot yourself. I turned the show off after the next contestant successfully guessed how many grams are in a pound of butter, but couldn't figure out who Shuster and Siegel created. Sigh.
Ah, well. In other television news, I discovered that my set can receive multiple languages, enabling me to watch shows not only in German, but also in French and Spanish. Not English. Noooo -- though I do get all the dubbed U.S. movie my heart could desire (not, upon reflection, a very large amount.). I do have to admit, though, that, contrary to all expectations, Will Smith can actually be funny. All it takes is to give him the voice of a hyperactive chipmunk on helium. I'm telling you, it made Men in Black a much more entertaining move.

posted at 4:50 PM by Timothy J. Gibbons | link

-------