From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V8 #179 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Friday, May 14 1999 Volume 08 : Number 179 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Beatlefest [Joel Mullins ] Re: Happy Highway Mummy [amadain ] Re: Six degrees you want? Six degrees you got! [Glen Uber ] Re: Happy Highway Mummy [Capuchin ] The Matrix [Michael Wolfe ] re: the absolute nadir ;) ["Russ Reynolds" ] Re: Happy Highway Mummy [Tom Clark ] rack'n'roll (and ruin) ["jbranscombe@compuserve.com" ] Re: fegbooks: Let there be more darknesse [Stewart Russell 3295 Analyst_P] Re: Happy Highway Mummy [David Librik ] Re: autoharps [Mike Runion ] Re: Happy Highway Mummy ["Paul Christian Glenn" ] Re: fegbooks: Let there be more darknesse [overbury@cn.ca] Re: Alan Rickman & autoharps [Michael R Godwin ] Re: fegbooks: Let there be more darknesse [Aaron Mandel ] Re: Seven Ways from Sunday [Michael R Godwin ] Looking to buy a potting shed [Carole Reichstein Subject: Beatlefest I just got the Beatlefest '99 catalogue in the mail today. This is a great catalogue that I get every year and any Bealtes fan should do the same. They've got everything. In addition to the usual CDs, books, videos, t-shirts, and ties, they also have stuff like the With the Beatles blanket, the Help belt-buckle, the Yellow Submarine inflatable arm-chairs, the Magical Mystery Tour ceramic cookie jar, and the Sgt. Pepper's salt and pepper shakers. They've got a lot of Yellow Submarine stuff this year, like the Yellow Sumbarine lava lamp. Anyway, this is a must for any Beatles fan. You can look at the online catalogue at . You can also order an actual catalogue there, I think. Later Joel ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 18:17:35 -0600 From: amadain Subject: Re: Happy Highway Mummy >It's not that I would want to avoid shit like that. I was just in the >mood to see a comedy and that's what I thought I was getting. It's my >own fault, I admit that. OK. Seems I at least have gotten a bit off the track. Sorry to belabor the point. I fear that is not unusual. I can sense Eb nodding along :). >Well, I don't do that either. I rarely see a movie in a theater that >I've never heard of before, because of that exact reason. I guess the difference would be that I usually don't rent a movie that I haven't heard of before either. But then I'm kind of weird in that respect. I rarely ever see anything at the average Blockbuster or whatever store that I know absolutely nothing about, and usually that's some straight-to-video jobbie or something. Specialty stores are a different thing, but in those places usually it has to do with the director and/or screenwriter if I've never heard of the thing before. I don't get to these kinda stores very often, as I live with a person whose tastes run more towards things like "People Shooting Up The Place And Occasionally Pausing To Wisecrack" and "Lots of Evil Alien Things Die", we have to accomodate each other. Sometimes we can even agree and get beer and a Jackie Chan flick and everyone's happy. Most of the time tho, it's surreal double bills like "Apartment Zero" and "Starship Troopers". Oddly enough, most of the time the Hollywood flicks that seem to me like they might potentially be good or at least interesting don't hold much interest for him. Go figure. Love on ya, Susan ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 16:42:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Glen Uber Subject: Re: Six degrees you want? Six degrees you got! On Mon, 10 May 1999, JH3 wrote: >>PS - another Sakamoto link: >>Sakamoto-Simon Jeffes-Gavyn Wright-Andy Partridge-Thomas Dolby-RH. > >You could leave out Jeffes and Wright if you wanted to - Partridge >worked directly with Sakamoto on "B-2 Unit." There's a much easier one: Sakamoto-Belew-Mastellotto-Hitchcock Cheers! - -Glen- "There are two ways to get enough. One is to accumulate more. The other is to desire less." --G.K. Chesterton Glen Uber | uberg@sonic.net | http://www.sonic.net/~uberg ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 18:37:06 -0700 From: Joel Mullins Subject: Re: Happy Highway Mummy amadain wrote: > I don't get to these > kinda stores very often, as I live with a person whose tastes run more > towards things like "People Shooting Up The Place And Occasionally Pausing > To Wisecrack" and "Lots of Evil Alien Things Die", we have to accomodate > each other. That's funny. I've got a friend who thinks the only good movies are the ones where someone's trying to save the world. Joel ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 17:01:55 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Happy Highway Mummy On Thu, 13 May 1999, chad leahy wrote: > i also rarely rent a movie based on the box alone. one semi-recent > exception would be "pi." an excellent example of the power of decent > packaging. I hope you mean that to say that the excellent packaging got you, the unsuspecting customer, to rent Pi, a shitty fucking movie that is just plain offensive to the core. Oh... have we had this discussion before? I think we have. It pains me to see films that claim to be highly intelligent and intellectual and all that and then go and insult everything rational and thinking. Bitter about stupid people... again. Je. - -- ________________________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 00:20:22 +0000 (GMT) From: Michael Wolfe Subject: The Matrix Hi all! As some of you know, I enjoy writing film criticism as a hobby. Keep in mind that my own interpretation of "film criticism" is pretty broad. I don't tend to "review" (i.e., report an informed value judgement based on filmic criteria) or even "criticize" (i.e., offer an evaluation of a work's strengths and weakness, with an aim to improving it, or do better next time) so much as try to dig within the work for meaning. To interrogate the subtext, so to speak. At least, that's what I flatter myself in saying. Others will have to be the judge of my success. I've never subjected this forum to any of my pieces before, and do not intend to make a practice of it in the future (at least, not beyond the occasional plug of my url: ) But my most recent review is somewhat germaine (if belated) to the discussions we've had on both the film mentioned in my header, and on another topic that's sucked up lots of bandwidth in recent weeks. So given the relatively thoughtful discourse that has taken place on both of these subjects, I thought I'd go out on a limb and see what y'all think. Two apologies in advance: * This'll probably suck up a good chunk of the next digest, sorry. * My description of the under-achieving high school male is derived from self examination [ ;) ], so please, nobody take it personally. THE MATRIX - There are few things in my career as an amateur film critic that have been quite so exciting for me as inspiration. The experience of walking out of a film and realizing that I've already composed half of a doctoral dissertation in my head is quite potent (and quite rare, if my rate of output is any indication). And after the lights went up for the Wachowski brothers' new film, The Matrix, I was positively cackling with glee. Quite a bit of ink has been spilled over this movie already, both by my nominal colleagues in the on-line community and by the critics in the more traditional media. And much of it has been in praise of the film, this approbation culminating with a piece printed in the Chicago Reader (!) (Admittedly, Jonathon Rosenbaum - whose own reaction to the film was somewhat cooler - was not the author.) My exultation came from having something interesting to say, but it was heightened because I felt that my own dissenting opinion added something fresh to the discourse. Before I get into that, for the benefit of those who have not seen the film (which, judging by it's grosses to date, can't be too many of you), The Matrix is a sci-fi action movie starring actor dude Keanu Reeves as a computer dude with the handle "Neo". After more ambitious (but less successful) turns as a prostitute dude in My Own Private Idaho and an evil dude in Much Adude About Nothing, and having gotten his break as consummate dude Ted "Theodore" Logan, Reeves finally seems to have settled on a level of dude-ness that suits him. The film concerns itself with Neo as he struggles to fit into his role as savior, and his efforts to save humanity from a world in which Things Are Not As They Seem (tee em). Now, (being sure to steel yourself first) imagine that you're back in high school, among this film's target demographic. You're young, you have a bad case of acne, you dig computers, and you have tendency to argue passionately in favor of the literary merits of "graphic novels". The girls hate you, as a given. You have a brain, so the jocks hate you. You don't use it though, so your teachers hate you. That's a pretty good percentage of the population that's against you. Naturally, it's fairly easy to see how a fantasy about a world that is set up to enslave and dominate you on a very fundamental level would strike a chord. You feel like you're smarter and more talented than just about everyone around you, but you're strangely powerless - it must be The Man keeping you down. Not coincidentally, this is precisely the premise of The Matrix. On top of that, The Matrix posits a mechanism for "downloading" knowledge - years of kung fu or helicopter piloting expertise gleaned in an instant - which, given underachieving high-school outcasts' distaste for homework, has a special appeal. Then there's the gorgeous, leather-clad heroine, compelled by fate to fall in love with the protagonist. Leaven that with more guns than you can shake a pinky at, fisticuffs lifted directly from Mortal Kombat, and Woo-meets-Peckinpah gunplay, and the result is a film that positively reeks of puerile male fantasy. That is not to say that these themes appeal only to the alienated high-school underachiever, it's simply that the mix in The Matrix seems particularly well suited to that demographic. The review that I had already written in my head before the end of the closing credits, while conceding the film's effectiveness as a visceral entertainment, excoriated it for being so transparent in embodying, validating, and celebrating that most egotistical of mindsets: that of the teenage boy. But in the interim that inevitably comes between patting myself on the back for my insightful observations and putting them to paper, an unwelcome synchronicity transpired: the massacre in Littleton. The details of the states of mind of the (adolescent male) perpetrators were eerily similar to the state of mind that I saw reflected in The Matrix. And for the first time in my life, it felt pretty rotten to be proven right. Anti-free speech rhetoricians have invoked this similarity in their tirades against "Hollywood immorality", saying that this type of entertainment sets up a culture of violence and desensitization. In all honesty, I am not entirely sure what to think about that proposition. For one thing, it is important to realize that the mere portrayal of a condition does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of that condition. For example, Kieslowski's A Short Film about Killing portrays two instances of murder in vivid detail, yet it would be quite a stretch to say that the film sanctions killing under any circumstance. The cases in which violence is glamorized as a means of "problem solving" are more ambiguous, but it's hard to draw more than a superficial connection between the two factors - especially when one compares fiction to our own country's (real life) foreign policy decisions. There are precedents of resorting to violence for "conflict resolution" - both on the local and international levels - which are far more disturbing than anything found in Hollywood's over-the-top fakery. To steal a quote that has been stolen before, "the far scarier idea isn't that the Gulf War was faked - it's that it did happen, and everyone thought it was just good TV." I think that first amendment apologists do themselves a grave disservice in allowing the battle lines to be drawn in this way. The "free speech is the best protection against tyranny" position has been the bulwark of their defense for too long - it lets censorship advocates choose the battlefield, and it encourages lesser-of-two-evils style thinking. It is also relatively ineffective against those who seek to restrict what they see as harmful, but "non-political" speech. A more productive tack might be to stress the importance of keeping lines of communication open, which is the most fundamental purpose of speech. Speaking encompasses far more than political statements; it can also be used (among many other things) to communicate ideas, to offer comfort, and to convey distress. At least on the surface, most people consider this type of speech pretty innocuous. To wit, if an individual says, "That man just attacked me!" or, "I'm at the end of my rope, and I feel like I might just kill somebody!" it's pretty clear that the problem is not in the speaking. Even if you shut the speaker up, there's still something wrong. However, I note this last point (and use these examples) in particular because I see movies (and The Matrix specifically) as speech of this kind, but for a group, not an individual. The cinema is a highly collaborative art form, with the visions of many people blending together to bring the finished product to the screen - from composers to cinematographers, production designers to screenwriters, there are many hands in the stew. Furthermore, though it's not usually thought of as such, the audience is a key part of this collaboration. On a tangible level, it is the audience which finances the production, and on a more metaphysical level, each audience member projects something of himself onto the screen (to fill in the gaps, so to speak). Thus, in examining the reaction to a film of the public in attendance, we can see what themes ring true for them. In some senses, a film speaks for every member of the collaboration, including the audience. So, then, what does The Matrix say? Well, judging simply from the box office, it says that for a large group of people, the fantasies of adolescent boys hold a great deal of appeal. A more in-depth polling of audience demographics and reactions might tell us more, or it might not. It seems, though, that giving a voice to this kind of collective frame of mind could be useful. Such a tool for generating hypotheses about a group of people could be beneficial in diagnosing our society's ills. I don't know of a panacea for the problems that came to the surface in Littleton, but I do think that the answer lies in listening more, not in talking less. Anyway, for those of you who made it this far, thanks for indulging me. BTW, I gave the film a B-, if anyone cares. - -Michael Wolfe ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 17:58:55 -0700 From: "Russ Reynolds" Subject: re: the absolute nadir ;) >> What is the first thing you would do if you woke up and found that you >> were a Beatle? >> >> --Farnsworth Probably the first thing I do every morning as me: grab the sports section and take a good long shit. - -rUss, who had beers with Bayard at the ballpark formerly known as Candlestick yesterday. Ya shoulda seen Mr. "I like cold weather" shivering in the wind. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 18:06:40 -0700 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: Happy Highway Mummy On 5/13/99 6:37 PM, Joel Mullins wrote: >amadain wrote: > >> I don't get to these >> kinda stores very often, as I live with a person whose tastes run more >> towards things like "People Shooting Up The Place And Occasionally Pausing >> To Wisecrack" and "Lots of Evil Alien Things Die", we have to accomodate >> each other. > >That's funny. I've got a friend who thinks the only good movies are the >ones where someone's trying to save the world. For those of you who enjoy low brow action flicks, you can't beat the work of Andy Sidaris. The acting is atrocious, the boobs are grossly overinflated, and shit blows up all over the place. Oh, and the scenarios are ridiculous - four people flying a Cessna from Dallas to Honolulu? http://www.andysidaris.com/ - -tc ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 22:00:52 -0400 From: "jbranscombe@compuserve.com" Subject: rack'n'roll (and ruin) Fowler's Modern English Usage has it that (w)rack comes from the Old English 'wraec' meaning 'damage, disaster, destruction'. Just a quick recommendation to Londoners or Metropolis visitors. Go and see Hey, Gringo! at the Cafe Coq, 154 Shaftesbury Ave. Don't know when it's on until, but certainly this month at least. Hilarious and poignant stories told by an excellent actor of his times back-packing in South America. Nice food as well. El Vez. jmbc. P.S. I know the original '(w)rack' query came as a result of a Guardian article. Did you see that the same paper picked up on a recent credit card name-search which discovered 19 Elvis Presleys living in Scotland? (I'll shut up soon I promise). P.P.S. The woman at Warner's U.K. who handled the publicity on Storefront H. was called Denise Sharp. Coincidence? I think not.... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 01:41:07 PDT From: "Capitalism Blows" Subject: Re: Happy Highway Mummy he's right. Kicking And Screaming is really a terriffic movie. saw it several times. the singapore censorship board (might not be the exact name of it, but something like that) has changed the title of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me to Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shioked Me. this is, of course, a much better title (and the original title was already very good). _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 12:10:14 +0100 (BST) From: Stewart Russell 3295 Analyst_Programmer Subject: Re: fegbooks: Let there be more darknesse >>>>> "Ross#" == overbury writes: Ross#> Wrack is "bend, twist, distort", in Billy Gates' thesaurus. Ross#> Robert & Collins English/French dictionary shows it as Ross#> synonymous with "rack", and the illustrative use of the Ross#> word "rack" is 'to rack and ruin'. It's an old form of 'wreck'. And the English/French dictionary to which you allude is most definitely "Collins-Robert", for the English side was written in this very office in which I sit... - -- Stewart C. Russell Analyst Programmer, Dictionary Division stewart@ref.collins.co.uk HarperCollins Publishers use Disclaimer; my $opinion; Glasgow, Scotland ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 07:11:43 -0500 From: David Librik Subject: Re: Happy Highway Mummy >he's right. Kicking And Screaming is really a terriffic movie. saw it >several times. I've seen wannabe-Quentin-Tarantino movies and wannabe-Alfred-Hitchcock movies but this is the only wannabe-Whit-Stillman flick I've ever seen. Tons o' fun. - - David Librik "going trans-Metropolitan, yip-aye-ay" ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 08:54:40 -0400 From: Mike Runion Subject: Re: autoharps Eb seb: > MG: > >PS The characteristic twanging sound on 'You didn't have to be so nice' is > >John Sebastian playing the autoharp. Does anyone still use autoharps? > > I saw that all-star Johnny Cash tribute on TV a couple of weeks ago, and > June Carter Cash sang a song (I think it was "Ring of Fire") while playing > autoharp.... My wife owns a nice old autoharp and brings it up on stage with her about once a month or so. She only sings one or two songs with it. Mainly she just uses it to play old Appalachian hill instrumentals. She usually gets a pretty enthusiastic response from the old coffeeshop crowd. Autoharps can sound quite pretty and perhaps a bit melancholy when played well...evoking that sorta "early evening creaking wood porch overlooking the creek as the fireflies begin to come out" thing...or Tori Amos' "Boys For Pele" album cover. My wife's also got an ancient and nearly unplayable zither (basically an autoharp without the chord keys), and a swell banjolin (or banjo-uke...a nifty cross between a banjo and a mandolin). On movies: I absolutely love picking up movies I know nothing about. 9 times out of 10 they suck, but every now and then...wow! While we were in Paris a few weeks back, we were bored to tears, desperately waiting for Sunday so we could get home after two weeks abroad. The new Cronenberg movie "eXistenZ" is/was playing all over France. We finally found it in English with French Subtitles and decided what the hell. Very cool movie. About half way through you're still trying to decide if it's really any good or not, then it's over, the credits roll, and you go back outside and you're just like the most paranoid little beast and everything you see is weird and you feel like everyone is looking at you and you realize you just sat through a hell of a movie. Or at least I did, for what it's worth. Back to it, Mike ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 08:28:02 -0500 From: "Paul Christian Glenn" Subject: Re: Happy Highway Mummy >I hope you mean that to say that the excellent packaging got you, the >unsuspecting customer, to rent Pi, a shitty fucking movie that is just >plain offensive to the core. Hey - I *really* liked "Pi". I was intrigued and fascinated throughout. It reminds me of Robyn, actually, whom I like - hold on, here - not because he's a musical *genius* and not because he's perfect (for he is neither), but simply because he's *creative*. He's doing things that I'm not seeing everywhere else. That's what I liked about "Pi". It was creative and intriguing and...."offensive"? Where do you get "offensive" from? >Oh... have we had this discussion before? I think we have. Musta been before my time. Please digress. :) >It pains me to see films that claim to be highly intelligent and >intellectual and all How does a film claim to be highly intellignent and intellectual? Wouldn't that be the critics (or fans) who make that claim? >that and then go and insult everything rational and >thinking. I don't know about rational thinking - I just know that it was a lot of fun to watch. >Bitter about stupid people... again. Hey! I resemble that remark! <--{Apologies to Garfield} Paul Christian Glenn | "Besides being complicated, trance@radiks.net | reality, in my experience, is http://x-real.firinn.org | usually odd." - C.S. Lewis Currently Reading: "The Two Towers" by J.R.R. Tolkien ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 09:48:19 +0000 From: overbury@cn.ca Subject: Re: fegbooks: Let there be more darknesse > It's an old form of 'wreck'. And the English/French dictionary to > which you allude is most definitely "Collins-Robert", for the English side > was written in this very office in which I sit... It's "Le Robert & Collins Senior" in Quebec. French gets first billing here by law, bustaire! - -- Ross Overbury Montreal, Quebec, Canada ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 15:24:49 +0100 (BST) From: Michael R Godwin Subject: Re: Alan Rickman & autoharps On Thu, 13 May 1999, amadain wrote: > Alan Rickman comes to > mind. Jeremy Irons is another. Maybe John Hurt. But they're exceptional. All Alan Rickman fans should try to get hold of a set of videos of the 1980s BBC-TV series "Barchester Chronicles", in which he plays the ultra-slimy Parson Slope. Extraordinary performance set among a rock-solid cast including Donald Pleasance as the Warden (sympathetic), Nigel Hawthorne as the Archdeacon (apoplectic), Geraldine McEwan as Mrs Proudie (didactic), Clive Swift as the Bishop (emollient) and Susan Hampshire as the Signora (romantic). "..finely tuned playing of a hand- picked cast, led by Nigel Hawthorne's hissing Lucifer of an Archdeacon, Clive Swift's goggling, wet-lipped Bishop and a gooseflesh-making Slope, all a angles and black gloves, from Alan Rickman" (Jonathan Keates) - see http://kelclancy.tgsolutions.com/reviews/bar-tls.htm - - Mike Godwin PS Thanks for autoharp responses - they reminded me that I once saw Mike Seeger on TV (brother? of the more famous Pete) playing a flashy Appalachian tune on an autoharp. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 10:47:35 -0400 (EDT) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: Re: fegbooks: Let there be more darknesse On Thu, 13 May 1999, Michael R Godwin wrote: > PS Pedants' corner: There was a headline in the Grauniad today which used > the phrase 'Wrack and ruin'. I thought that 'wrack' was a kind of seaweed, > and that the correct spelling of this phrase was 'rack and ruin'. Any > ideas? And what does 'wrack / rack' mean in this context? 'wrack' appears six times in Shakespeare, twice as a verb and four times as a noun. it seems to have the weight of 'wreck' on a larger scale, sort of like 'ruin', i guess. a ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 13:03:44 -0400 (EDT) From: dmw Subject: random movies i love to see movies that i know nothing about. when you have no particular expectations, they can't trip you up. i probably would have liked _from dusk to dawn_ far better if its turn into the cheesy and macabre had been unexpected. i used to belong to a film preview club, once every two weeks we would see a film that wasn't even released (in some cases, films that didn't even have distribution deals). generally, Peter, who picked the flicks, would say *something* about the film beforehand, but often very little. we would discuss it afterwards, often with cast or crew of the film. (the especially cool thing was that Peter had good taste -- i didn't *like* all of the films, exactly, but they were never less than interesting, and some of them were stunning. we saw kieslowski's _red_, for example -- i was literally shaking when i left the theater.) anyway, the hit rate was a lot better than random selection from the shelves of your local video store. i really miss the club. i sometimes still go to see films that i know virtually nothing about, but it's not the same. not that y'all care. on mislabelling: i really am sympathetic to joel -- the first time i saw _vampire's kiss_, i found it, for god's sake, in the *comedy* section. and yes, it's funny in a hysteria-edged way, a fine film on its own terms, but scarcely the light divertisement my girlfriend and i were in the mood for. speaking of nicholas cage, an actor i do like enough to see almost all of his films. - -- d. n.p. bill frisell _nashville_ - - "seventeen!" cried the humbug, always first with the wrong answer. - - oh no!! you've just read mail from doug = dmw@radix.net dmw@mwmw.com - - get yr pathos:www.pathetic-caverns.com -- books, flicks, tunes, etc. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 18:09:51 +0100 (BST) From: Michael R Godwin Subject: Re: Seven Ways from Sunday On Thu, 6 May 1999 normal@grove.ufl.edu wrote: > Unrelatedly, I picked up Paul McCartney's "Ram", The Pretty Things' "S.F. > Sorrow" and The Moles' "Instinct". [snip] > I rather liked S.F. Sorrow. Doesn't make any sense, but psychedelic > rock operas generally don't. (Are there any that do?) Apart from > "Balloon Burning" and "I See You", I like every song on the album. And S.F. Sorrow is the _first_ rock opera - accept no imitations. At least there aren't any tanks disguised as armadillos rushing around on the cover, or wives of Henry VIII, or lyrics by Jon Anderson. If you like SFS, you might also like 'Parachute' which I think is the best of the post-R'n'B Pretty Things albums. - - Mike Godwin PS Are the Moles the band who pretended to be a Beatle or Beatles in disguise in order to get airplay? The only song I ever heard by them was "We are the Moles" [thinks: lucky the band was called the Moles, or that title wouldn't have been much cop] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 12:02:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Carole Reichstein Subject: Looking to buy a potting shed I'm about to start the daunting task of looking for a condo to buy, or if I'm extremely lucky, a tiny house. Though the market isn't as expensive as San Francisco, it *is* a bit steep if you work in a bookstore like me. I was wondering. How much does a small cottage on the Isle of Wight cost these days? Maybe some English Fegs know. Any real estate types care to venture how much Robyn paid for his place? No, I'm not looking to buy it from him! I haven't inherited a windfall or anything. Scrimping and saving, Carole ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 12:14:48 -0800 From: Eb Subject: really sick of seeing H... H... M... as a subject line Paul: >Hey - I *really* liked "Pi". I was intrigued and fascinated throughout. It >reminds me of Robyn, actually, whom I like - hold on, here - not because >he's a >musical *genius* and not because he's perfect (for he is neither), but simply >because he's *creative*. He's doing things that I'm not seeing everywhere >else. >That's what I liked about "Pi". It was creative and intriguing >and...."offensive"? Where do you get "offensive" from? I'll save Jeme the trouble. He's all indignant, because the mathematical aspects of Pi aren't realistic enough for him. It's a geek objection, like folks who went to see Jurassic Park and said it was a bad film only because the cloning process didn't seem feasible. ;P Eb ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V8 #179 *******************************