Stephanie, gone 12 years

It's the 12th anniversary of Stephanie's death on the highway in Arizona.

I just searched again last night and found another artifact: Stephanie's zine Hey Stranger listed on the web. If a girl whose whole career was limited to a couple of little bitty zines and a few illustrations in others' zines could be said to have a masterpiece, this was hers.

Story idea: searching for disappeared journalists

From a story in the New York Times [permalink] about a foursome of NYT journalists who disappeared for a few days during the recent fighting in Libya:

[After two days of being taken from place to place by Libyan soldiers,] [t]hey landed on Thursday in Tripoli, where they were handed over to Libyan defense officials. They were transferred to a safe house, where they said they were treated well. They were each allowed a brief phone call. That was the first time since their capture two and a half days earlier that their whereabouts became known to their families and colleagues at The Times.

Their disappearance had kicked off an intensive search effort. The Times canvassed hospitals and morgues, beginning a grim process-of-elimination search. The paper also turned to a variety of people on the ground who might have heard or seen something -- local residents, security contractors for Western businesses, workers for nongovernmental organizations. It also notified American diplomats.

The State Department got word Thursday afternoon that the journalists were safe and unharmed, in a phone call to Jeffrey D. Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs ...

I'm interested in that middle paragraph -- the futile search. I wonder whose job that was, in the middle of a war, when they probably wanted all the stringers they could find to cover the fighting in various towns and cities, some people get a call that they're wanted, not for reporting, but to make the rounds of hospitals, jails and morgues, looking for a gaggle of American reporters. That would make a terrific premise for a surrealist novel, right down to the denouement in which, after a nightmarish journey across the war-torn landscape, the protagonist finds out that the journalists have been found safe, no thanks to him, in fact their whereabouts have been known for at least ten or twelve of the last harrowing hours that the protagonist has been risking his life to find news of them. Loads of irony along the way.

Boom microphone operator ruins 'The Adjustment Bureau'

I went on Saturday afternoon to see "The Adjustment Bureau," a romantic thriller starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. What's it about? Never mind. What I want to talk about is a technical point.

Do you know what a boom microphone is? Here, here's a behind-the-scenes picture from the production, showing the crew filming Matt Damon:

A man on the crew holds it at the end of a pole, just above the shot. At least it's supposed to be just outside the shot. Once in a great while, when watching a film or TV show, you'll see a little black blob in the frame just at the top, just for a half second. That's the boom mic.

Usually you see this on television, where production values are lower and shoots are faster. In Hollywood movies, almost never. When it does happen, someone is supposed to notice. If the cinematographer doesn't see it during the shot itself, someone will see it when they review the shots at the end of the day. And they surely must see it when the edit the freaking movie.

In "The Adjustment Bureau," there are three scenes in which you can see the boom mic. At least three scenes, because then I stopped counting. I stopped counting because I walked out, and I got a refund, because by that time I couldn't keep my eyes off the top of the frame.

For the record, you can see the mic:

• Several times during the washroom scene where the film's romantic leads meet. In fact you can see it in both stars' close-ups, which were of course done separately, so I think that means the boom mic operator was high all day.
• In the first scene in Union Square, where you see John Slattery, just as he sits down on the park bench with Anthony Mackie.
• In the scene in Central Park halfway through the movie, where Slattery and another actor have stepped outside the restaurant and are wondering what to do, there it is again.

WTF??!? Was this movie made by amateurs? Was anybody watching the dailies? Was anybody looking when they edited this film??

It's inexcusable.

Update: In the comments in this review of the movie, viewers from around the country complain about the boom mike. Some say you can see it ten times.

Crypto-fascist also has messianic complex

I've written previously about Chuck Baldwin, the former Baptist minister who moved his whole family from Florida to a rural Montana county filled with survivalist and Patriot Movement types. Of late he's been ranting about how churches that get federal 501(c)(3) tax exemption are somehow equivalent to Nazi collaborators. And today he emitted a real doozy, putting himself in the shoes of one of the "patriots" who fought and died at the Alamo in... what was it... 1836?

These were real men with real dreams and real desires. Real blood flowed through their veins. They loved their families and enjoyed life as much as any of us do. There was something different about them, however. They possessed a commitment to liberty that transcended personal safety and comfort. Liberty is an easy word to say, but it is a hard word to live up to. Freedom has little to do with financial gain or personal pleasure. Accompanying Freedom is her constant and unattractive companion, Responsibility. Neither is she an only child. Patriotism and Morality are her sisters. They are inseparable: destroy one and all will die.

It's like he doesn't even know what the famous battle of the Alamo even was. It was a bunch of shootists and bums who were hired by rich ranching and mining interests to pull territory away from Mexico. They weren't defending Liberty with a capital L. They were mercenaries.

But even if one accepts this Hollywood fantasy that the "defenders of the Alamo" were selfless patriots, saying "Patriotism and Morality and Liberty are inseparable: destroy one and all will die" sounds a little funny, since according to him those faithful patriots did not separate them, yet they all died.

Baldwin goes even farther:

Please try to remember the heroes of the Alamo as you watch our gutless political and religious leaders surrender to globalism, corporatism, and political correctness. Try to recall the time in this country when ordinary men and women had the courage of their convictions and were willing to sacrifice their lives for freedom and independence.

Okay... Just what is he asking "our political leaders" to do? Doubtless he wants them to go ahead and shut down the government and everything the most heated Tea Party first-term Congressman wants. Does he mean they should force that through, even if it means sacrificing their political careers to satisfy the far right's hatred of government? Is that the same thing as dying at the Alamo?

That's the thing about Baldwin. He spends so much time ranting about his political fantasies and tossing bombs at straw-man targets whom his readers couldn't possibly be interested in -- PETA, really? -- that he forgets to say what he wants, what he stands for. It's really kind of amazing.

Today, however, our national leaders are in the process of turning America over to the very forces that the Alamo defenders gave their lives resisting.

Who? Mexico? Ya really lost me.

Previously