I am way past due in getting around to writing the next part of this story. As you might recall from the first 2 parts, I had one baby tooth that I had never lost as a child due to the permanent tooth never coming in. Back in April, the tooth started bothering me and the dentist informed me that it was going to have to come out. I had it extracted in early-May.

On August 22, I had oral surgery to put in a dental implant, the first part of the process of replacing the lost tooth with an artificial one. This was the most invasive, and only surgical, part of the procedure. The surgery involved the insertion of a titanium artificial root into the jawbone through an incision at the gap where the extracted tooth used to be. Once the surgery has fully healed and the oral surgeon confirms that the bone has fused appropriately with the implant, my regular dentist will be able to affix a crown to the root, completing the process of replacing the lost tooth.

After I had the tooth extracted in late May, I had to wait a minimum of 6 or 7 weeks to allow it to fully heal before proceeding with the implant. That timing pretty much ran right into a vacation that we had planned for the end of June as well as the July 4th holiday, so I ended up deciding to just put up with the gap in my teeth for a bit longer. I finally contacted the oral surgeon’s office and set up an appointment for a consultation at the end of May.

The oral surgeon that I went to specializes in implant procedures. I think that might be the only thing he does, although I’m not entirely certain. Dental implants are expensive and generally considered by insurance companies to be an "elective" procedure (more on that later), so there actually was kind of a salesmanship element to the consultation. I even felt a bit like I had been to a luxury dental office, with such amenities as bottled water offered while waiting for the dentist and even sunglasses provided during the exam to shade by eyes from the examination light.

After the examination, the oral surgeon told me that I was a good candidate for the procedure and spent a little time going over the procedure in more detail. One key topic that he brought up in this discussion was the available options for anesthesia for the surgery. He indicated that general anesthesia wasn’t usually needed for this (I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think he even offers that as an option), but he did pretty strongly recommend the use of an oral sedative during the surgery in order to help me to relax and also to help to avoid movement during the procedure.

I then met briefly with a member of the office staff who went over some of the financial details of the procedure with me. She indicated a cost of a little over $2000 for the implant. Many dental insurance plans apparently do not cover implants, considering them to be fully optional, cosmetic procedures, even though they are now widely considered to keep the gums/jawbone much stronger and are also longer lasting than dental bridges. Fortunately, my insurance does cover about 50% of the cost, although apparently it is 50% of what the insurance company thinks the cost should be rather than 50% of what the oral surgeon actually charges (and the patient has to make up the difference). There are also annual maximums that come into play. As of the time that I’m writing this, my insurance company still hasn’t finished processing the claim and I don’t yet know how much they will cover.

After the financial discussion, we then scheduled the appointment for the procedure. I decided that I wanted to have it done on a Friday, which would then give me a couple days to recover without having to take more than one day off from work. We initially scheduled an appointment for the next Friday after the consultation, but they called the next day and let me know that the office staff had incorrectly recorded the itinerary for an upcoming vacation the oral surgeon was taking and would have to push it back a couple weeks. The August 22 appointment was the next available Friday. I wasn’t entirely thrilled that the only time available was 7:30am, but I still took the appointment since the only alternatives were to either switch to another day of the week or put the procedure off for almost another month.

The Presidential Debates

October 8, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

I have watched the TV broadcasts of both of the Presidential Debates that have been held during this election and I am left with a strong feeling that I’d still like to see the candidates actually debate. Both of the events so far have had strict rules and structure that have substantially reduced their value. The result has been that each has ended up being closer to a series of focused stump speeches. True discussion and interaction between Senators Obama and McCain has been almost entirely non-existent.

The basic format used in both debates was that each candidate would have 2 minutes to answer any given question, followed by a 60-second discussion period. Those discussion periods ended up almost always being short follow-up speeches rather than any kind of true back-and-forth between the candidates. Almost every time, both candidates went over the specified timings, despite the protests of the moderators, but that was almost always due to verbosity rather than any generation of discussion.

The two debates were extremely similar in content, with some of the responses even being pretty much word-for-word the same. The second debate did have a "town hall" format where voters in the audience asked the questions, but the questions were still pre-selected by the moderator and the audience members were not allowed to follow-up with any other questions or even requests for clarification. In many cases, the answers weren’t really precise responses to the question being asked and generally they weren’t called on it.

On multiple occasions during each debate, one of the candidates clearly indicated an interest in responding to a point made by the other, but was not allowed by the moderator who instead insisted that it was time to move on to the next topic. This was particularly frustrating since both candidates spent a lot of time giving alternate characterizations of the other candidate’s positions, but there was never enough back and forth to get to the bottom of what each candidate really would do.

It obviously isn’t going to happen this year, but I really would like to see a loosely-structured joint interview/discussion with the candidates without such strict rules. If the candidates start expressing differing takes on each other’s proposals, then I would like to see them continue going back and forth with clarifications and responses until the audience really does have a good idea of what the actual proposal is. The current format seems to be more about who can present a more convincing obfuscation than it is about truly understanding where anyone stands.

Either of the moderators so far (Jim Lehrer or Tom Brokaw) certainly could conduct a very effective discussion if they were simply allowed to use their journalistic instincts to manage a true discussion. Both of the moderators (especially Brokaw) actually came off rather poorly in the debates, looking more like strict teachers having to enforce overbearing rules than like journalists. I honestly have a hard time understanding why well-regarded journalists would even want to be involved in such restrictive events where the ultimate value is fairly limited.

In this day where most people have access to hundreds of TV stations as well as the vast resources of the Internet, debates that seem to be intensely restrictive in time and content seem like a major anachronism. I think one of the most important steps to bringing more truth and relevance into political campaigns is to better utilize today’s media to truly let the public get to know and understand the differences between the views and proposals of the two candidates.

John Williams: A Hollywood Legend (Concert Review)

September 6, 2008 Jeffrey Graebner1 Comment

Hollywood Bowl – August 30, 2008

John Williams’ annual concert of film music with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl has been an annual tradition for me as long as I have lived in Southern California. I’ve been a huge fan of Williams’ music since I was a kid and I love these regular opportunities to hear his music live, particularly with Williams conducting it himself.

Even though I have continued to attend, and thoroughly enjoy, the concerts every year, my last review was of the 2005 concert. The concerts are great fun, but the content is basically similar from year to year. The concerts tend to be targeted more towards the fans of Williams’ mainstream blockbusters than at film score enthusiasts, which results in the selections usually being drawn from a somewhat limited subset of Williams’ exceptional repertoire of compositions.

Williams typically includes a section featuring additional material besides his own during his concerts, sometimes including guest performers. My interest in those parts has varied from year to year. Generally, I have most enjoyed those segments when they have been very focused on classic film music that clearly influenced or otherwise connected strongly with Williams. The second half of this year’s concert featured a lengthy tribute to musicals directed by Stanley Donen, with each piece introduced (in person) by Donen himself. This was easily my favorite "extra" yet from the Williams’ Hollywood Bowl concerts I have attended.

New Technology Blog

August 26, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

Technology (particularly computers) have been a big part of my life for many years. I first became interested in computers at age 10 when my father purchased a Radio Shack TRS-80. I eventually went into Computer Engineering as my career and have been something of a gadget collector all of my adult life.

For the most part, I have generally avoided writing posts that were too focused on technology for this blog. I have a pretty good idea who my main readers are (most are friends or family) and I have a hunch that the interest level wouldn’t be overly high on most technology-related topics. At the same time, it certainly is an interest and I often come across bits of technology news or various tech-related tips or experiences that I’d like to relate. For this reason, I have maintained a second blog for quite a while for more technical posts.

When I first started that blog, it was very narrowly focused on Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs). I bought one of the earliest models released in that category and thought I’d have a lot to say as a bit of a pioneer in that area. Eventually, I kind of started to run dry on things to post on that topic and expanded the subject to include all kinds of mobile technology. Even that was a pretty limiting topic, though, and I eventually kind of abandoned that site as well.

I have now converted the blog into the generalized Bigbeaks Technology Blog. My plan is to make it more of a traditional weblog with shorter, more frequent posts, frequently highlighting interesting news items or articles that I encounter. I will also periodically post my personal discoveries or tips regarding technology and I’m sure I will also sometimes write reviews or longer essays as subjects come along that strike my interest.

Occasionally, I’m sure that there will be topics that are technology related (or at least tangentially so), but which still seem to be general interest enough for this blog as well. In those cases, I probably will post on whichever blog seems to be the best fit and then put up a post on the other one linking back. I suppose there may be rare occasions where I could choose to just cross-post to both as well.

Star Wars: My Declining Interest

August 24, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

Last weekend, a new Star Wars movie opened in theaters and I honestly was rather startled when I realized that I don’t particularly want to see it. Right now, my thought is that I might get around to watching it once it comes out on DVD, although even then I’m not entirely sure.

The new movie, Star Wars: The Clone Wars is an animated feature that serves as essentially the premiere episode of an upcoming series of the same name that will be airing starting this fall on Cartoon Network. The idea behind the series is to fill in the details of the titular war, which was initially referenced in passing during the original Star Wars way back in 1977. The war became a key story element in the much more recent prequel movies, but most of the actual war mainly took place off-screen between the events of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

Like a large portion of my generation, I basically grew up with Star Wars, seeing the original film during its first run (although I didn’t really take to it until a second viewing during the reissue 2 years later). The release of The Empire Strikes Back and especially Return of the Jedi were then huge events during my childhood. Collecting toys and other memorabilia related to the series was a big thing, with my sister and I even maintaining our "Star Wars wall" in the basement, which was covered in news clippings and other paper goods related to the movies. Growing up, I suspect I would have found it impossible to imagine not going to see a new Star Wars film opening weekend, much less deciding to forgo seeing it at all in the theater.

When I first heard that George Lucas was planning on returning to the Star Wars universe via television projects (both this upcoming animated series as well as a planned live action series that would bridge the gap between the two trilogies), my reaction was cautious interest and an expectation that I would probably at least check them out. The news earlier this year that the animated series would be kicked off with a feature film also left me with the impression that I would probably end up going to see it, even despite the fact that my movie-going has been curtailed quite a bit since the birth of my son.

My enthusiasm quickly started to wane once the first visuals from the movie and series started to come out and then pretty much dropped like a stone once I saw the trailers. Quite simply, I immensely dislike the visual style that is used for the animation. For some reason, they seem to have gone for something vaguely resembling the Japanese-style of animation, which I’ve never really cared for all that much and which seems hugely wrong for Star Wars. I think one of the things that has always been appealing about the movies was that, despite the otherworldly setting, the whole Star Wars universe had a basically realistic look to it. Even at its most alien, the setting always seemed like it was in places that could really exist. I didn’t get that feeling at all from the look of this animation, though, which instead seems exotic and excessively stylized.

Of course, I admit that this is kind of judging the book by its cover and that it is completely possible that the visual style is something that I could adjust to. That brings me to the second problem, which is that I generally have a hard time mustering much enthusiasm for this particular aspect of the Star Wars extended storyline. I’m not one of those that especially disliked the prequel trilogy, but I also wasn’t particularly excited by them either. I enjoyed all three films (especially Revenge of the Sith), but have not had much interest in revisiting them. I have seen each of the films of the original trilogy more times than all of my viewing of the prequel films combined. I haven’t really taken any interest at all in the related merchandise (other than the soundtrack CDs) or the various novels set during that part of the story. While the films were fun, I just don’t find the characterizations or situations all that compelling.

Related to my preference for the parts of the story surrounding the original trilogy, I will say that I haven’t completely lost interest in all things Star Wars. While I have little interest in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, I am somewhat interested in the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Unleashed video game, which is set during the time between the two trilogies. Similarly, I am at least somewhat interested in the announced live-action TV series that will also take place during that same time period. On a somewhat broader subject, I do look forward to the time in the next couple years when my son will be old enough to introduce him to the films, although I’m definitely more excited to share the original trilogy with him than the prequels. I do know with some certainty that I’m going to encourage him strongly to watch the movies in the order they were released.

I’m really pretty torn when it comes to my overall feelings about Star Wars at this time. While I still have a definite affection for it and certainly still admire the creativity and overall breadth of George Lucas’ creation, I also can’t help but feel like something that I once found extremely special has been diluted by an excess of mediocre product. On the other hand, I also can’t help but recognize that it might be just as much a reflection of my own aging and changing tastes and priorities too. I was 13-years-old when Return of the Jedi was released and I’m sure my impressions of all the films are inevitably colored by my stage in life when I saw them. Had I been an adult when the original trilogy came out, I’m sure my views on those films would have been somewhat different as well.

Even taking into consideration that my views on the films are filtered through childhood nostalgia, I do still think the films of the original trilogy were simply better movies. The original Star Wars (I’ve never been able to bring myself to call it A New Hope…) had some pretty bad acting and goofy dialog, but it also had a very tight, self-contained story and the big advantage of being an introduction to something truly new and exciting. With The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, George Lucas wisely brought in much more skilled screenwriters (Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan) to flesh out his stories and also handed the projects off to more technically-skilled directors. I really think Lucas is much more effective when he takes a role of creative oversight while letting others handle the details.

Critics of the recent Star Wars projects often bring up the idea that George Lucas should be working on telling other stories, including possibly the "small films" that he has sometimes talked about wanting to do. I admit that I’m now finding that I am wondering if Star Wars might be the one and only great creative concept that Lucas really has. Sure, he has done a few other projects that have had some success. The Indiana Jones films are the most obvious, although I do tend to think that a lot more of the credit for the success of that series really should likely go to Steven Spielberg than to Lucas. American Graffiti, which was Lucas’ one big hit prior to Star Wars is his one other pretty much unquestionable personal success, but it was a very early work that is also pretty clearly autobiographical in nature. I’m not really sure how likely he is to have another story of that kind in him, particularly at this late stage of his career.

Regardless of what Lucas does going forward, I do think his place in film history is pretty secure. Weaknesses aside, the Star Wars saga is a pretty remarkable accomplishment that really has been tremendously influential and is also likely to ultimately survive the test of time, at least to some extent. His companies have also been responsible for a great deal of innovation in film, including significant advances in special effects, sound, digital editing, computer graphics (a lot of people don’t realize that Pixar was originally a division of Lucasfilm), and digital photography. Even as I think he may be overextending Star Wars itself, I can’t see anything he does ever erasing or even substantially diminishing those accomplishments.

As a concluding note, I suppose my commentary in this post has been kind of all over the place, but it really is a reflection of very conflicted feelings. The original motivation to post this was really the fact that I wanted to want to see the new film, but I just don’t. In many ways, Star Wars has been an important cultural component of a large portion of my life. I can’t help looking at my fading interest with a bit of wistful sadness.

Our Hurricane Wilma Experience (October, 2005)

August 17, 2008 Jeffrey Graebner3 Comments

A post on The Disney Blog on Friday reported on the threat that Tropical Storm Fay poses to the Orlando area. In October of 2005, we were on vacation at Walt Disney World when Hurricane Wilma came through Florida. I wrote up a few paragraphs in that blog post’s “comments” section and it occurred to me that it might be worthwhile to expand those comments into a full report on that experience. These are based on nearly 3 year old recollections, but hopefully it will still be reasonably accurate.

Most people will likely remember that an unusually large number of strong hurricanes hit the southwestern USA, including Florida, during the Summer and early Fall of 2005. This, of course, included Hurricane Katrina, which so severely devastated New Orleans and other communities in that part of the country. Orlando was in the direct path of a few of these hurricanes and at least suffered some severe weather from most of them. Having family in the Orlando area, we had followed these events very closely, but we generally weren’t giving too much thought to any potential impact on our late-October vacation plans, since major hurricanes that late in the season were previously exceptionally unusual.

It did start to grow into a concern during the last week or so prior to our trip as Tropical Storm Wilma formed and eventually was upgraded into a very strong hurricane. It pretty quickly became apparent that Florida was within its most likely path. Out travel plans had us arriving in Orlando on the evening of Saturday, October 22. Initially, Wilma looked pretty likely to pass through before our trip, but the storm slowed down somewhat and it ended up making landfall on the southern part of Florida very early in the morning of Monday, October 24.

As the timing of the hurricane became more obvious, we did give some consideration about whether to change our travel plans. While we had heard that Disney and the airlines were generally being pretty generous about waving penalties for late changes to reservations due to the hurricanes, we had also heard numerous reports (including first-hand accounts from family) on how WDW had generally fared well during the previous storms of the season. The combination of my work schedule and the typically long lead time needed for most WDW reservations led us to realize that our only likely alternatives to going as planned would be to either cut the trip short by a couple days or cancel it altogether. We ended up deciding to take our chances.

I admit that we did come awfully close to canceling on Friday, though, as our son (just under 2-years-old at the time) woke up that morning with a bad case of pink eye. We did get him in to see his doctor that day, who very helpfully prescribed a liquid antibiotic that required refrigeration, not exactly the best thing when we had a full day of air travel coming up the next day. That problem was solved by a quick trip to the store to buy a soft-side cooler and some Blue Ice, but it still was yet another concern. Late that afternoon when my wife started complaining of a sore throat (typically the first sign of a cold for her), I couldn’t help but wonder if we were seriously tempting fate by planning to continue the trip. Fortunately, neither of their ailments actually turned out to be overly long-lasting or severe (they were both pretty much fine by Sunday), but we didn’t know that at the time and I admit to being something of a nervous wreck by Friday evening.

Disneyland Resort Trips Report – June/July 2008 Part 2: Attractions and Shows

August 3, 2008 Jeffrey Graebner1 Comment

In part 1 of this report, I mentioned that over multi-day visit to the Disneyland Resort was a replacement for an originally planned trip to Walt Disney World around the same time and that we decided to delay the trip because our son had become skittish about visiting theme park attractions. Since the Disneyland Resort is so much closer to home and we visit it much more frequently, we figured that our visit there would be a better opportunity to keep trying to re-build his courage while not really feeling like we are missing all that much if what we can do remains pretty limited.

During this visit, we let our son largely set the pace and do a lot of the choosing when it came to the rides and shows that we visited, but we also gave him a lot of encouragement to work some new experiences into the visit as well. He visited his favorite attractions (King Arthur’s and King Triton’s Carousels, Mad Tea Party, Tuck and Roll Drive ’em Buggies, Goofy’s Playhouse, Playhouse Disney Live, Enchanted Tiki Room) while also talking him into visiting several that weren’t on his previous "approved" list (such as MuppetVision 3D, the Aladdin stage show, Toy Story Midway Mania, and the Mark Twain Riverboat). We still didn’t do any of the major thrill rides, even though he is now tall enough for many, but he definitely is making progress.

One thing to note is that we did almost entirely stick to visiting attractions that our whole family could do together. I really was the only one in our party that could have done most of the major thrill rides, since our son isn’t really up to them yet and everyone else in our group has restrictions due to medical conditions. I’m certain I could have gone off to do some of the coasters had I wanted to, but I really was far more interested in family time. I do look forward to the time when my son is ready to do some of those bigger rides with me, but I’m also in no rush about it. The experience of seeing the attractions with my child is so rewarding that I don’t miss the thrill rides.

In the rest of this post, I’m going to write up specific notes on a few key attractions. Our visits to the Disneyland Resort have become less frequent than they used to be and these trips ended up being the first opportunity to see a few new attractions and shows. I’ll also include a few notes about some of the other attractions and shows that included some memorable element.

Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage

The re-themed and re-opened version of Disneyland’s classic Submarine Voyage was the major new attraction for summer of 2007. Due to the extremely long lines (often over 2 hours or more) combined with our son’s skittishness, we hadn’t yet visited it before this trip. We were pretty determined to finally see the ride on this visit, with my father (who is a major Disney-enthusiast) being particularly excited to have the opportunity to ride the subs again.

During our first full day at the parks (Monday 6/23) the ride was having a lot of technical difficulties, resulting in it being closed for much of the day. I’m not really sure if it ever actually opened that day as it was listed as "temporarily closed’ every time we checked in. We did leave the resort for dinner at Knott’s that evening, though, so it may very well have opened later in the day. Seeing it closed so much on Monday did make us (my father in particular) pretty nervous about whether or not we would actually get an opportunity to ride it. On Tuesday, though, the ride was opened and we found that it had a posted wait time of around an hour shortly after we had finished our lunch at the Blue Bayou.

One really nice feature of the ride is that they offer a special, alternative experience for disabled guests who are unable to board the submarines. Off to the side of the dock where guests board the regular ride, there is a building containing a small theater (it seats about 30 guests) where they show a high-definition video presentation of the full ride experience. My mother suffers from severe arthritis in her legs (she has to use a motorized scooter much of the time) and couldn’t possibly have managed the narrow ladder to get onto the ride. My wife has a back condition and also had doubts about whether or not she could board, thus she decided to join my mother and attend the alternate version. They took our son along as well, since we were pretty doubtful that he would be willing to board the rather claustrophobic submarine.

Guests using the alternate experience enter through an entrance near the monorail entrance. With the fairly high-capacity and fairly low-demand for it, they found that they only had to wait for the next available showing. After helping them to get situated in the line for the alternate experience and arranging where to meet later, my father and I were prepared to head around to get into the hour-long queue for the regular ride. Much to our surprise, the ride attendants instead escorted us to a nearby waiting area and told us that we would be put onto the next submarine. That means that we boarded the regular ride about the same time that the others entered the theater, thus minimizing the amount of time our family was separated.

The X-Files: I Want To Believe – Review with Spoilers

July 27, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

As a pretty big fan of The X-Files (I even went to a convention once) back when it was on TV, I was definitely pleased when the news came out last year that a new feature film would be coming out this year. Certainly, my enthusiasm was particularly strong thanks to the fact that stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson would both be returning and that series creator Chris Carter would be writing and directing. The resultant film is surprisingly modest, but I also found it to be a spooky and compelling thriller that felt true to the characters and effectively reflected the tone of the series.

With it being 6 years since the series ended (and 10 years since the last feature film), Carter and his co-writer Frank Spotnitz (also a regular contributor to the series), wisely decided to go with a story that very easily stands on its own without substantially involving the complex, and sometimes kind of convoluted, conspiracy mythology that ended up generally dominating the later seasons of the series. The result actually has more of the look and feel of an episode from one of the earliest seasons, back when the main focus was on stand-alone plots about a crime with, often somewhat ambiguous, supernatural overtones. While I did enjoy the conspiracy aspects of the series, if nothing else for its pure complexity, I tended to prefer the more standalone episodes. Because of that, this movie largely fit with what I generally liked best about the series. I can understand pretty easily, though, why this film could feel disappointing to fans that preferred the conspiracy stories or who were hoping for a feature film that had grander ambitions.

It has been pretty widely reported that 20th Century Fox would only green-light another "X-Files" feature if Carter agreed to keep it to a very low-budget. Reportedly, the film ended up costing around $30 million, which is amazingly low for a major studio feature today, particularly one built around a known franchise. Fortunately, they came up with a story that fit the budget instead of trying to cut corners. The film is very dialog-driven and does not feature large special effects sequences or big set pieces. The film builds a fair amount of tension, and is even downright scary at times, and that is largely accomplished via fairly old-fashioned filmmaking techniques, including frequently relying on the viewer’s imagination to fill in what isn’t shown directly. Score composer Mark Snow (who also scored the entire TV series and the previous film) again contributes greatly to the tension and overall mood of the film.

The scale of the film is small enough that I could see a pretty good argument being made that perhaps they should have done this as a TV movie instead of a theatrical release. They did largely ignore the conventional wisdom that a feature film requires a story that is much grander and larger in scope than the typical TV episodes. The longer running time of the film does provide room for more story development at a more leisurely pace. I suspect that will may find the film a bit slow as it doesn’t have the rapid cutting and frequent action sequences that are typical of most summer thrillers. The pacing of this film is actually quite a bit slower even in comparison to the first "X-Files" film. The film does also benefit from some effective use of the full wide-screen frame, particularly during a few key sequences set in snow-covered fields as well as during one very well-shot foot chase. I also think that the somewhat complex and dialog-driven nature of the movie was well served from the generally stronger focus given to a movie in a theater than with the usual distractions of a TV viewing.

Los Angeles Freeway Construction – A Rant

July 21, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

I think Caltrans is specifically conspiring to make it as difficult as possible for us to get home from Orange County on a Sunday night. Last night, we had dinner with friends at Downtown Disney (which was very nice), but it ended up taking us close to 2 hours to get home to Van Nuys, mostly due to multiple construction projects.

We left the Disneyland Resort a little before 11pm and traffic on the North 5 was moving along at pretty much full speed until just past the 91 interchange, where it came to almost a complete halt. I wasn’t able to see the brake lights until we were too far past the 91 to cut over to it as an alternate route. The big problem at this point was that they were doing construction work that had all but the far left lane closed. This brought traffic to a near stand-still, even fairly late at night.

While in this, I heard a traffic report on the radio indicating that there was a Sig Alert at the Slauson exit a bit further north, so I definitely wanted to get off the 5. I decided to try and exit at either Auto Center Drive or Beach Blvd. and then cut across surface streets to the 91. It turned out that the Auto Center Drive exit was closed completely, but there wasn’t a "ramp closed" sign until you were pretty much right at it. That actually resulted in me merging to the right at one point into a lane that was about to end, because I didn’t realize the exit ramp wasn’t accessible. I then continued to stay as far right as I could, since there were no signs indicating where I needed to be to get off at Beach, assuming that exit was even opened. It did turn out to be opened, but it took us about 20-30 minutes (I lost track of the exact time) or so to go the 1-2 miles from the start of the construction zone to the exit.

The Beach exit actually drops you onto Auto Center Drive, just a bit north of the exit for that road specifically. You then turn onto Beach at the next light. When we got to Beach, we found that it was actually closed as well at that intersection. That meant that we then had to turn on Stanton instead and then cut over to Beach near Knott’s Berry Farm in order to backtrack over to the 91. Just to further my rant against road work, I should mention here that we did get stuck behind a sweet sweeper for part of the way as we went down Stanton.

The 91 was basically smooth going. We then got off on the N-710 and found that they had the 2 left lanes closed on that road as well. Fortunately, we were only going a short distance there (up to the 105) and traffic is generally light enough on the 710 that time of night that the construction didn’t slow things down that much. It didn’t take us very long to get onto the 105-W, which we then took over to the 405-N.

The 405 wasn’t too bad through the LAX area, but then slowed to a crawl right around Culver Blvd. Yes, as you probably guessed by now, Caltrans had a couple lanes closed for construction between Culver and the 10 interchange. That stretch of road is pretty bad even under the best of circumstances (this is one of the busiest stretches of road in the country), so traffic was once again barely moving. Obviously, this wasn’t as bad as it could have been during rush hour, but it still took quite a while to get through there. To make matters worse, I was starting to need a restroom pretty badly, which helped to make the rest of the drive even more miserable. With the traffic largely stopped, it would have been incredibly difficult to force our way over to the right to get off at any of the exits. In addition, it was after midnight by this point, so I think there was little chance that there would have been anywhere opened with public restrooms that were both available and safe to use.

Once we got past that construction zone, fortunately traffic was moving pretty much full speed the rest of the way. By this time, we were all pretty completely wiped out and miserable, of course. In fact, I ended up getting home and sending a note off to my boss at work that I was planning to come in late this morning (they owe me a few hours anyway…), so I guess I should probably head there once I finish typing this.

I certainly do see the need for construction work on the freeways, and I understand why Sunday nights are a good time to do it, but last night certainly was frustrating. I couldn’t help but think that there must have been some way that they could have better planned the projects so that someone driving a fairly common route (Orange County to the San Fernando Valley) wouldn’t keep continuously finding construction zones pretty much everywhere they turned.

The Muppet Movie at Arclight Sherman Oaks

July 16, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

The Arclight Theaters in Sherman Oaks and Hollywood pretty regularly run screenings of older movies. Many of those screenings are done in coordination with the American Film Institute (AFI) as part of their various top-100 lists. On Monday evening, the theater in Sherman Oaks held a showing of The Muppet Movie.

Having grown up as a fan of the Muppets and with very fond memories of the movie, my wife and I both were very enthusiastic about this opportunity to take our 4-year-old son to see the film on the big screen. We heard about this screening only a couple days after our son had seen (and liked) the Muppetvision 3D movie at Disney’s California Adventure for the first time, so we felt it was likely that he would be reasonably receptive to the movie.

I suspect that anyone that is actually opening a blog post about this 29-year-old movie has probably already seen it, so I’m not going to spend much time "reviewing" the film. I think it is likely that even most big fans of the movie probably haven’t seen it for quite some time. Before Monday’s showing, the last time I saw the movie was probably around the time the DVD came out, which was likely close to a decade ago. My wife indicated that she didn’t think she had seen it since she saw it as a kid during its original theatrical release.

With the passage of time, we both still had a lot of nostalgia for the film, but we had kind of forgotten how good a movie it really is on its own merits. Much of the dialog has a very genuine and rather intelligent wit to it. As was typical of the Muppets, there is a lot of humor that is directed very squarely at the adults in the audience. Jim Henson and his team were exceptionally adept at accomplishing this while still keeping the movie completely kid-friendly. The movie does have its fair share of sight gags as well, although they aren’t as dominant as in the later Muppet projects. A good comedy is always better with an enthusiastic audience and that was definitely the case at this showing. Seeing this movie with an audience of fans was really a lot of fun.

One aspect that I hadn’t forgotten (as much thanks to the soundtrack CD as anything) is how good Paul Williams’ songs for the film are. The most famous is "The Rainbow Connection" (its inclusion in the AFI’s Top-100 Movie Songs list was the reason for the screening) and it really is a wonderful song, but the others are fun too. I particularly get a huge kick of out Frank Oz’s extremely tortured rendition (as Miss Piggy) of the big romantic ballad "Never Before, Never Again". The exaggerated vocals combined with the visuals of Kermit and Miss Piggy in way over-the-top parodies of classic romantic movie scenes are really quite hilarious and received an extremely big reaction from the audience.

I hadn’t remembered that the film was as low-budget an effort as it was. The movie wasn’t a major studio release and, at this showing, there was actually a bit of laughter at the obscure "Associated Film Distributers" logo that opened the movie. While the movie isn’t as slick as the later efforts (particularly the big-budget Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island that were made for Disney), the puppetry definitely still holds up. I remember that the scenes of Kermit riding a bicycle got a lot of attention back in 1979 and those scenes actually do still hold up. Of course, even with the low budget, the film did attract an extremely impressive group of celebrity cameos, including James Coburn, Dom DeLuise, Steve Martin, Telly Savalas, Elliot Gould, Madeline Kahn, Mel Brooks, Cloris Leachman, Edgar Bergen (who died shortly afterwards — the film is dedicated to him), Bob Hope, Carol Kane, Milton Berle, Richard Pryor, and Orson Welles. The movie came out during the run of "The Muppet Show", which attracted a similarly impressive list of guest stars despite being a non-network series. That says a great deal about how appealing the Muppet characters really were.

I was a bit surprised that there were fewer kids in the audience for this show than I thought there would be. While I did expect that the movie would be an especially big nostalgic draw for those in the same general age range as my wife and me, I also figured that a pretty large percentage of those attending would be parents that were taking their own kids to see it. We certainly weren’t the only family there with a small child, but we did seem to be in the minority. Fortunately, our son was very well-behaved the whole time. Beforehand, we had emphasized very strongly that he had to stay quiet during the movie and he took that very much to heart. In fact, we had a bit of a problem with him repeatedly reminding us of "no talking at the movie" when we tried to engage in conversation before the movie started.

This was only our son’s 2nd trip to the movies (the first was "Horton Hears a Who" a couple months ago) as my wife and I both felt strongly about waiting until we felt he was mature enough to behave appropriately in a theater. While he was very well behaved, I do have some uncertainty about is reaction to the movie. He certainly did seem attentive to the screen the whole time (other than occasionally peeking back at the projection booth) and he never asked to leave. On the other hand, the movie doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression. Our son tends to talk pretty non-stop about activities that really excite him, but he has had very little to say about the movie. I certainly don’t think it was a bad experience for him or anything, but this is a pretty dialog-intensive movie that is probably targeted at somewhat older kids.

One of the major features of the Arclight theater is that all shows are strictly reserved seating instead of the more common general admission seating that you find at most movie theaters. When I ordered our tickets, I think they had been on-sale for just a couple days, but seat availability was already becoming pretty limited. I was able to find us three seats together about 2/3 of the way back, although pretty far over to the side. Based on this, we were expecting a sold-out show, which definitely turned out to be correct. The demand for the movie actually turned out to be so high that they ended up shifting the screening into a larger auditorium than originally intended.

This change did cause about a 15-minute delay in the start time since the change of auditoriums messed up the reserved seating a bit. We picked up the tickets at the box-office about 30 minutes before the show and I later realized that the seats printed on it were different than the ones we had originally ordered. They were in roughly the same spot, just on the left side of the theater instead of the right. We later ran into a bit of an argument when another couple showed up believing they had the same seats (I’m guessing they had a "print-at-home" ticket). An usher did try to get us to shift to the other seats, but I was hesitant to end up in different seat numbers than the ones printed on our tickets, just in case someone else showed up with a claim on those seats. I was also concerned that there were 3 of us, but the other party with a claim on the seats was just 2 people. Working with the theater employees, the other couple ended up moving to the other set of seats and we stayed put. It was obvious that there were quite a few similar situations around the theater and I give the employees credit for managing to sort it all out fairly quickly and without major issues.

This is a 29-year-old, relatively low-budget film and that was reflected somewhat in the presentation. The print, which I suspect may have dated back to the original run, was kind of faded, but otherwise in pretty good condition. The sound definitely was a lot harsher and lower-fidelity than we are generally used to today as well. With it being just a single screening, they showed the movie using reels rather than transferring it to platters. The projectionist did miss one reel change slightly (we saw a bit of the leader), but otherwise they did a good job with the projection. I even noticed the projectionist adjusting the framing and focus on a few occasions during the course of the movie, something that is all too rare at theaters today.

I tend to think the availability of classic movie screenings like this is one of the best parts of living in the Los Angeles area. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing this old-favorite on the big screen again and was glad to have had the chance to share it with my family.

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