Things That Go Blog in the Night

I just found out that I am a member of "Generation Jones", a name coined some years back for those of us born after the famous (and shamelessly self-promoting) Baby Boom, between roughly 1954 to 1965. After us come yet another self-obsessed bunch, Generation X.

I also came across a social network site aimed at "Boomers" and "Jonesers", BOOMj.com.

The site's name says it all: FOUR! CAPITAL! LETTERS! for the Boomers, one measly lower-case j for the rest of us. It's like we're just the punctuation to mark the end of their time.

Before the Boomers was the self-proclaimed "Greatest Generation". After the Boomers comes an anonymous bunch who lived the banal lives depicted on "That '70s Show" and were expected to like it. The Summer of Love is what they got. The ugliest clothes in history is what we got.

Sheesh.

The fantasy movie Stardust is in theaters (in the US) now. See it while it lasts, because it is, inexplicably, failing at the box office.

Amateur reviewers often say, "this film has everything", and they're usually wrong. In this case, they are not: this film has everything: young love (dashed and restored), witches (evil and funny), flying pirate ships (and a pirate captain with a twist you'd never expect), evil princes (and the ghosts of evil princes killed by same), humor, romance, special effects -- and most importantly of all, a story that will leave you happily teary-eyed at the end.

A couple of years ago, I chanced to see both the first Harry Potter movie and the first Lord of the Rings movie on the same weekend. Both movies boiled down and put together couldn't lace up this movie's boots. In both of those movies, I had a curious detachment from the characters. Frankly, in LotR, the only character I cared whether he lived or died at the end was the appealingly bumbling Samwise Gangee. As for Harry Potter, far more than enough has been said about that franchise for a decade or ten.

I haven't read the Neil Gaiman graphic novel from which Stardust is derived, but those who have and loved the book claim to love the movie equally: unnecessary bookish details were removed, necessarily cinematic episodes were added, and the end result is a rollicking ride from Sir Ian McAllister's narrative opening to the film's twinkling conclusion.

My 10-year-old, with his thoroughly 21st-century kid's point of view, put it this way: "Can you imagine what the DVD special features are going to be like?!"

With all due respect to Ryan, don't wait for the DVD: See Stardust in the theater.

A wildfire in Henry Coe park Southeast of San Jose is visible from the entire valley, including my front porch. It is also visible via the "HamCam" on the famous Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton

I will not say that the fire is licking at the hillsides. I won't do it. It's just wrong.