Why did Baz Luhrmann put Mercutio on drugs?

I agree that the Queen Mab speech is weird and trippy. I myself would have some difficulty directing it effectively. This is part of why I do not make films.

Putting Mercutio on drugs is cheating. Flat out. Drunkenness might be acceptable, but even then it's a stretch. LSD is just false.

Mercutio is the greatest character in modern western drama. Probably the greatest character in all drama ever, but I lack experience and therefore credibility. He has a list of great lines as long as your arm. He is neither tiresome nor a cipher.

The Queen Mab speech is his big set-piece. It is a cop-out of epic proportions to drug him up for it.

Why don't people want to taste their alcohol?

I have seen it, in advertisements. Smirnoff claims to make a vodka mojito. There is no such thing as a vodka mojito. I mean, I guess you could make an amusing commie joke about it, but there really isn't any such thing. A mojito is the Cuban julep, with rum instead of bourbon. Vodka is not like rum. A vodka mojito, soi-disant, is an abomination.

This is part of an alarming trend that makes every drink with vodka, and, if possible, a flavored vodka. Just drink fruit juice, people. It will taste the same and you will do fewer things you regret.

If you're drinking martinis*, the betting is that you will notice how much you are drinking, and possibly stop before disaster strikes. This is, of course, not foolproof. But if you're drinking some fruity vodka concoction, you have no idea how much you have drunk and things can end badly.

Also, it makes you a sissy.

* Made from gin. Always made from gin.

Why do women ruin films (part 2)?

I was recently watching a sweeping historical classic. There was jousting and Plantagenets, it was a time when men were men and women were insane, and Freddie Mercury did the soundtrack.

That's right, I was watching A Knight's Tale. And I know, again, that the woman is not the first problem that comes to mind. But she should be, because the rest is unpretentious and happy-go-lucky and I like the Black Prince enough that I don't really mind if his character is ridiculous as long as he's there and good-looking.

First off, the girl, Jocelyn, is profoundly weird in aspect, and I am fairly certain that's not just because they enjoy strapping cockatiels to her head. This would be less grating if we weren't constantly told how beautiful she was. I don't demand that women be beautiful, I merely demand that we not lie to ourselves.

Her looks we can pass over. But she is also arbitrary, demanding, and insane. The demanding often came in a context in which I think we were supposed to be impressed with how progressive the writers were in writing a strong woman in a mediaeval flick, so it is at least explicable if not palatable.

Arbitrary insanity is different, however. She demands a total sacrifice of self-respect as a proof of love. That's just evil. Watching a humiliation with pleasure, or still worse with satisfaction, is disgusting. Plus, he'll hate her for it.

Well, he should. He doesn't, though, because he's a sucker. He should totally go off with Kate the blacksmith instead of standing for Jocelyn's garbage. Kids will see this in the movies and think it's okay to be a terrible person. This is no good.

Why are there chicken nuggets not shaped like dinosaurs?

There's really no point. Chickens do not come in nugget shape. The supposedly chicken-shaped nuggets are just as big a lie as the dinosaurs.

But they are also less awesome. When I was in college, I could get the cheap Wegman's brand of chicken dinosaurs, and there were four species of dinosaurs. Four. A tyrannosaur, a stegosaur, a triceratops, and what we were taught at an early age was a brontosaur but was apparently actually an apatosaur. It was amazing. Yeah, I was twenty years old. What's your point?

I've had it pointed out to me that if there were no boring chicken nuggets then the dinosaurs would be less special and exciting. It would also be difficult to say "dinosaur chicken nuggets" because there would be no "nugget chicken nuggets." These are both fool's arguments. If my food can't have epic Jurassic battles, I'm not interested.

PS for all you pedants, I said "Jurassic" on purpose just to make you angry. Also because "Mesozoic Park" sounds stupid.

Why does Princeton choke away every game in the second half?

In fairness, this weekend's game was the first one I've seen them lose. This season.

I am aware, incidentally, that Princeton has not won a national football title since 1955, that Princetonians going on to play professionally are exceptions rather than the rule, and that if I wanted to see a good game of football I might want to try the Big Ten instead of the Ivy League. This is not the point.

The teams Princeton plays are also in the Ivy League. They should be beatable. At home. In front of an enthusiastic Homecoming crowd. Indeed, Princeton led at the half. As they so often do, and did. And will, I suppose.

It did rain. However, unless Harvard is even sneakier than I have previously thought, they have not developed portable, invisible, man-sized rain shields for their football team. And it wasn't that cold, so the weather-hardened tough men of Cambridge didn't have an advantage.

It's not the losing. It's the leading at the half.

Why can't people tell the difference of "e.g." from "i.e.?"

("E.g." means "exempli gratia," or "for [the sake of] example." "I.e." means "id est," or "that is.")

They are not hard to tell apart. You only have to learn it once.

But the worst part? You never have to use either of them. They have exact English equivalents. It is not like "élan," for which we do not have a word because we are not French. No one will mock you for saying "that is" instead of "i.e."

But they will mock you for saying "e.g." when you mean "i.e." Or at least I will. And that's really what you should be worrying about, here.

Why were the Backstreet Boys chosen to sing the national anthem at game one of the World Series?

You'll notice I don't ask "Why did the Backstreet Boys sing the national anthem...?" This is because I do not believe what they did can really be called singing, nor what they perpetrated be called, strictly speaking, the national anthem.

Or, quite frankly, that the four washed up losers on the screen in their World Series jackets and unfortunate jeans can really be called the Backstreet Boys. Weren't there five of them?

Now, I realize Tampa may not have a lot going for it, as a city. But the Backstreet Boys? This is the World Series. Everyone in the country is watching it, except for soulless drones who hate baseball and America (and some of them are watching it anyway). You should have good acts lined up for the first four games, and then the Backstreet Boys for the maybe-we'll-need-you sixth and seventh games. They have never had an album that was actually what you'd call good, and it's been ages even since they had a song that you could call a hit.

And what is it that compels people to murder the national anthem? Like, their own national anthem? Those four sounded like a barbershop quartet on some pretty heavy tranquilizers. In tight pants. Seriously?

And what was with those sunglasses? It's a dome!

Why do motorists camp out behind my left shoulder?

When I am on my bicycle. It would be strange otherwise.

It's infuriating. And, I'm pretty sure, unsafe. If you're behind me, I cannot see you. I cannot see your turn signals. I have no idea what you are planning to do. The longer you stay behind me, the more chance we have that I, or you, will swerve randomly and disaster will ensue.

Furthermore, it wastes your time. Almost always, in this situation, there is room--lots of room--for the automobile to pass me. I try not to cycle on crowded streets for precisely this reason. Also, I am not going to speed up just because you're right behind me. I am going ten to twelve miles an hour and that is not going to change. There are no hidden jet turbines under the bicycle's seat, sorry.

It severely limits my mobility. Say I want to get into the left turn lane, but you don't. Or even if you do. Because I don't know, because I can't see you and am not psychic. I can't. You're right behind me. I can't drift to the left. And I am too scared to rely on my signal informing you of my intent, because you're the kind of motorist who thinks it's helpful to tailgate a bicycle.

Also, it's menacing.

Why does Jack Ryan have a sex life?

And, more importantly, why does Tom Clancy think we want to know?

Now, if you're a sane human being, you think that The Hunt for Red October is Clancy's best book, because it is. It was published by the Naval Institute Press, it's incredibly gripping, and Sean Connery was in the film. It also has pretty much no women in it. On account of its having a plot.

But. Clancy got cocky. In (I believe, and I am not going back to check) Clear and Present Danger, Jack has marital problems. What? Who cares? Sure, I like his wife, she's fine, I forget her name, whatever. But I really do not care that they are trying to get pregnant while actually interesting things are happening in Latin America, with Willem Dafoe. I absolutely do not care that Jack's feelings of inadequacy about the mission are interfering with the Ryans' attempts to get pregnant. He's freaking Jack Ryan; he can take his insecurities somewhere else.

Also, there is only one person in the world who writes more awkward bedroom scenes than Tom Clancy, and that's William F. Buckley, Jr. Yuck, guys. Yuck.

Why does Dr. Jorge Vargas have a German accent?

At the beginning of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, we meet a man named Jorge Vargas. As far as I know, both that forename and that surname are Spanish.

But even if they're not Spanish, I know that they are not German. Not even a little bit. And his nationality is staggeringly inconsequential. If you want an old man in horn-rims with a German accent, name him Wilhelm Schweinsteiger!

I know what you're saying. You think that bad accent control is about #173,408 on the list of things wrong with Sky Captain. You're right. But it's also easily fixed. You know, if people weren't ignorant and careless. Apparently language consultants in film studios are illiterate lemurs.

"Ich heiße Jorge?" Seriously, people?

Why are there so many election-themed ads?

You know, for the Gap.

It's not cute, people. I am so unbelievably sick of this campaign that I now turn off my brain when confronted with any actual political advertisement. If you're selling jeans, the word "vote" should not arise.

I imagine most people feel like this to a greater or lesser extent, excluding the political junkies, who are a zombie-like class and will not remove their thumbs from their Blackberries until the returns are in and so will not be buying jeans anyway.

These ads are not hip. They are perhaps topical, but that is not the same thing. And you know what kind of topical we like in our ads? The kind where Eli Manning gets some screen time because now he has a Super Bowl ring too. Beyond that, you can keep it.

Why do they let Kathryn Jean Lopez write things?

I read a lot of National Review Online. I think I'm reading slightly less now that it's election season and the ennui has set in, but, regardless, I read quite a bit of it.

I ask again, why do they let Kathryn Jean Lopez write things? She is an embarrassment. She's uncritical, has no conception of priorities, and can't spell. While it is true that many pundits (on both sides) are astonishingly blind to the existence of people who disagree with them, she takes it to a whole new level--a whole, new, blind, parochial level.

Even when I agree with her, she makes my brain itch with her platitudinous inanity. She pretends she's trying to write something with an argument, but she's not. She's just trotting out the same dogmatic stuff, time after time, as though it's original. Newsflash, honey: they weren't convinced by this last time, they're not going to be convinced this time. You could at least try.

I'm sure she's really stellar at the administrative side. Please let her stick to that. Or at least give her a quota on stupid.

Oh, man, and please stop trying to pull the Roman Catholic intellectual thing. I'm better at it, and I'm Episcopalian.

Why does internet television always play the same commercial over and over?

I mean the legal kind of internet television, when you didn't watch How I Met Your Mother because some jerk put it on during Monday Night Football, so you watch it the next day on cbs.com.

It's not a problem that there are commercials. They need to pay for bandwidth and all that kind of thing, and they do put the episodes up for free.

However. I'm at the point at which if I ever see another one of those incredibly annoying Bertolli sauce-in-a-bag commercials, I'm going to break something. I hated the Sprint "Instinct" phone ads from the beginning. Now I hate them more. This is what happens when I have to watch the same commercial (or at least for the same product) five times during an episode.

Please mix up the commercials. I'm never going to buy the sauce-in-a-bag anyway; you are merely increasing my resolve.

Why do people leave games before the final whistle?

This goes for sports that don't have final whistles as well; you know what I mean.

It's lame. In most sports, it's stupid. Imagine leaving the 1999 European Cup final in the 89th minute because Manchester United couldn't possibly come back. Imagine leaving any number of Indianapolis Colts games because even Peyton Manning couldn't possibly overcome that deficit.

Baseball's even worse, because it's not time-dependent. That 27th out might come after eight runs are scored. It probably won't, it's true. But it might. Even Mariano Rivera is fallible. Last-minute comebacks are the best. Do you really want to be that schmuck who left in the eighth inning to beat the traffic?

Also, it's rude. Your team is losing, so you send the message that you don't even care enough to see if they might redeem themselves. Or, your team is winning, but you send the message that their triumph is not worth watching in its entirety.

It's selfish, and classless, and unmannerly. And it annoys your friends who actually like sports.

Why do writers kill main characters just because they can?

The one that turned me off most to an author was the death of Eddard Stark in the first of George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. Eddard (or Ned) was the only interesting and sympathetic character in the whole (extremely long) book. Something goes slightly wrong, and boom! Ned is dead. There's the whiskey-tango-foxtrot factor, and then the "George R.R. Martin, you are a jackass" factor. I stuck it out through one or two of the other (also extremely long) books in the series before I admitted that I hated everyone and didn't care.

I realize that we keep main characters alive by convention. But do you know why it's convention? Because it's nice. I'm not saying everyone has to live through everything. I'm sad when Biggs dies, and I'm near-hysterical when Goose dies, but those are dramatically important and logical. I'm just saying you shouldn't kill people off just to mess with your audience, and to get a kick out of their pain.

Another prime perpetrator is Joss Whedon. He gets a perverse pleasure from the sucker-punch, apparently. The worst and most sudden of these was Wash's death in Serenity, which came out of absolutely nowhere. It was all happy-go-lucky space cowboy time, and then there was a spike through Wash. Not okay. But that was a feature film, and you expect that bad things will perhaps happen to main characters.

Doyle's death in Angel was much crazier. It wasn't even halfway through the first season, his character was a main credits kind of character, and all kinds of people manage improbably not to die in those shows. Plus, he was cute. At least he died gallantly.

I like happy endings. I like improbable escapes. Everyone does, unless he is a self-flagellating misery freak. Don't deprive us just because you can. If you have to, do it because it matters.

Also, J.K. Rowling? Could Lupin's death have sucked more? Thanks for nothing.

Why is there a chat window on GameCast?

More importantly, why is it the default option, instead of, say, the play by play? If I'm using GameCast, chances are I'd like to know what's going on in the game. What is actually going on in the game, I mean, and not what some loser moron from Ohio thinks about it.

Almost all sports fans are awful. I'm pretty sure I'm awful, and my friends are also total jerks, which is why we prefer to watch our sports in private. That way we don't have to deal with everyone else's stupidity.

But no, GameCast brings these people into my home. There's a reason I don't listen to sports talk radio, guys. It's because it's stupid and useless. Because the people are stupid and useless. Get away!

Why are pigeons so fearless?

All birds are creepy. They have little beady eyes and tiny brains, but they can fly. One is never sure whether to have an inferiority complex or not.

But pigeons are worse. Because they're not afraid of you. You can walk within six inches of your common or garden city pigeon, and it will give you a beady-eyed look of disdain. It is not impressed. It will not squawk and flee. It knows who you are. You are a hulking clumsy thing that has maybe two chances in five of dropping something to eat.

This is not the way it's supposed to work. Birds are small. Birds should be afraid of us. Hitchcock films should not be lurking in the back of our minds as we walk down a Manhattan block.

Back off, pigeons. I have an umbrella.

Why doesn't Microsoft Word display the Athenian lower-case omega with a smooth breathing and an acute accent?

ARGH.

Why is "gender" a verb now?

It happens to a lot of words, I guess. "Access" is one that is generally accepted now. I still fight against "transition." But I can see where that might be a verb you might want.

"Gender?" Seriously? Apparently now you can "gender" a "discourse." Well, I can also "vomit up" my "lunch."

I get kind of annoyed when people demand to have a discussion in terms of gender, because there are certainly more interesting things to discuss. But I demand that they have that discussion "in terms of gender." They are not allowed to "gender the discussion."

Some things are "gendered," possibly, like nouns, but it makes more sense to talk about how they "have gender" rather than "are gendered." I might concede that gender can, sometimes, be used as a verb, but there's no point to it and therefore it shouldn't be there.

But it sure isn't a transitive verb. Don't even think about using it transitively, you stupid hippies.

Addendum: It has been pointed out to me that "gender" is a transitive verb. A transitive verb that means "beget" or "produce." I'm still right.

Why are ginkgoes ever intentional?

They smell terrible. And then they scatter their little stinkbombs everywhere, so that you step on them or bicycle through them, and carry their stench with you for some yards.

I realize they only do this for a brief period in the autumn. It is not brief enough.

Ginkgoes aren't even attractive trees. If magnolias smelled as bad, they would still not be pretty enough to counterbalance the reek. Sure, ginkgoes have that nice fan shape we associate with Japanese art, but they don't flower nicely, and they don't even turn a particularly striking color in the autumn. They may have faced down the dinosaurs, but that was a long time ago, and what have they done for me lately?

They have to be in botanical gardens, I guess, and it's fine if they occur naturally. But to plant an arcade of ginkgoes? On purpose? What are you smoking?

I propose we inaugurate a smelly/pretty scale for trees.

Why do people say "besides the point?"

It's wrong. That's not what "besides" means. It's not a spacial preposition. "Beside" is, which is why we use it in that phrase.

The cafeteria can't be besides the gym. It can be beside the gym. Likewise, nothing can be besides the point. It can't happen. Stop saying it. Gosh!

Why do people use pretentious Greek spellings?

Do you know who Thoukydides is? Well, yes, you do, but it took you a bit longer than it should have to come up with that answer. Also, why isn't it "Thoukudides," jackass? If you're going to be a pretentious jerkweed, you should at least be consistent and properly doctrinaire. But no, you realized that "Thoukudides" looks completely asinine and the "y" is required for "Thoukydides" to be even remotely intelligible. Do you also write "Aiskhulos?"

Look, guys, in English we spell it "Thucydides." And "Aeschylus." We pretty much always have. And that's okay. It was latinized and then it was anglicized. This is what happens. It is not a moral failing. It is a different language.

Now, when translating something (say, the Iliad), it's permissible to retain ostentatiously Hellenist transliterations (say, "Akhilleus"), because you are attempting to recreate something of the language and atmosphere. I am not here picking a fight with Richmond Lattimore. But in normal academic prose, this sort of thing is needlessly obfuscatory and priggish. We all know Greek too.

"C" is not inherently inferior to "K." "Y" is not inherently inferior to "U." Sometimes conventions are useful, you pretentious hippie bastard.

Why did the Beach Boys ever record "Barbara Ann?"

First, it's hard to contemplate that "Barbara Ann" was ever a remotely sexy name. I've managed to get past "Help Me, Rhonda," by pointing out to myself that Big Rhonda from That '70s Show was probably atypical, but I will never be convinced about "Barbara Ann." It's too maiden-aunty.

Also, I know trousers were tight in the 60s, and I know that falsetto was what the Beach Boys did, but the high-pitched keening in this song really sounds like someone's about to bust a gasket. Or make a cup of tea. Not really what you look for in a serenade.

And the lyrics? Are you kidding me? There's actually a line where they go "ba ba ba ba ba black sheep." Honestly? Did someone think that was clever? Did Brian Wilson just lose it? Oh, the inanity.

The song also lends itself to cheesy car ads. This is not strictly speaking the Beach Boys' fault, but, seriously, guys. This song is ridiculous. Ridiculously terrible.