Stephen Laniel’s Unspecified Bunker

I’ve been in Vermont since Wednesday night, “chillin’ wit’” my family. Vermont’s just a great place. I’ve been hanging out in the traditional spots - Muddy Waters, really — and have had a really chill time. Vermont’s really good for my mind.

I think it would be cool to raise kids here, but at the same time I don’t want them to be so sheltered that they think everyone is white and upper-middle-class. I don’t consider myself closed-minded, but there’s a lot to be said for exposing kids to varied environments when they’re young. At the same time, there’s a lot to be said for not getting them shot. So I’m not sure where I’ll raise them. When I have kids at age 45, I’ll get back to you.

People should keep me out of bookstores. I should have self-control, but every time I go in a bookstore I come out with at least three books. Today, I went into the Border’s on Church Street in Burlington and bought Anna Karenina; the first book from Remembrance of Things Past (the French was A la recherche des temps perdus, I believe, which would mean something closer to In Search Of Lost Times); and Law School Confidential (thanks to my law-school friend Rebecca). I also grabbed the DVD of Woody Allen’s masterpiece Manhattan. They’re all amazing, and I’m sure I’ll read them all, but I wish I could hold myself back. Good thing Border’s doesn’t sell cocaine, or I’d be screwed.

I spent two hours before bed last night coding Perl. This after probably seven hours of Perl coding at work. I am now an über-geek, it seems.

However, I did see Michael Moore’s new movie Bowling For Columbine before coding last night. It’s great. I’ve written a review of it for those who are interested.

Having just seen the Harry Potter movie, I’m reminded that I can’t really watch most movies anymore. The really great ones — the Hitchcocks, the Gilliams, the Wes Andersons, the Kubricks — have spoiled me for the mediocre ones. 99% of the films I’ve seen in the last few months will be forgotten within ten years. The remaining 1% will be films that we show our grandkids.

It’s a strange spiral: the studios pump out mostly crap because it makes money. It makes money because people watch it. People watch it because, at least in part, they don’t know they have other choices; the “art films” don’t get promoted nearly as well as the Pearl Harbors. So they watch what’s available, and the cycle continues.

Maybe it’s worthwhile to call this “McDonald’s Syndrome”: a company produces cheap low-quality products. People snatch it up because it’s cheap and widely available. Because of economies of scale, the company can afford to invest in more efficient equipment, dropping the per-unit cost even more. Sales continue to increase.

We can certainly imagine an alternative, whereby McDonald’s stuck to grade-A beef in all their products, only bought from local organic farmers, and gave their employees a decent wage and good health care. Economies of scale would probably still kick in, only now the high-quality organic produce and health care would plummet in price. In other words, we might get an upward spiral of quality, rather than the downward one that we see.

I’m rambling. I meant to talk about Harry Potter a little bit — a film which promises to do great things when it starts. Indeed, within a few minutes of its starting, I turned to one of my companions and remarked that I was now sad not to have seen the first movie in the series. I spoke too soon, though: it quickly descended into a series of movie clichés plus special effects. The effects were quite good, but I think — hope, anyway — that we’re past the stage when special effects alone make people respect a film. Making the audience ignore animated characters because they don’t look animated is a pretty basic step, akin to actors who act well enough that we don’t realize they’re acting.

Harry Potter is a good movie that few people will remember in 10 years. It’s too bad that it will probably also sell better than any Hitchcock film ever has.