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There are very few things more entertaining to read than a sharp, biting review of a really bad movie. As Exhibit A, I offer the San Francisco Chronicle’s review of the movie “Alone in the Dark.”

Here’s a teaser of what you’ll find in the review:

“Alone in the Dark” is the best Ed Wood movie never made. It fails so miserably as both an action and horror picture that it succeeds as a comedy. It’s a film so mind-blowingly horrible that it teeters on the edge of cinematic immortality….

Every casting decision, camera angle, special effect and sound seems created as a dare to leave the theater.

I’m sure this seminar’s title makes perfect sense to Limnology students, but to nearly everyone else it certainly is a mystery:

Limnology Seminar. “Roles of a Mixotrophic Protist in the Microbial
Food Web of Crystal Bog.” Stuart Jones, Professor, Civil and
Environmental Engineering, UW-Madison. 102 Water Science and
Engineering Lab, 660 N. Park St. 12:00 noon

The elevator at my doctor’s office has a clear user interface problem.The building in which the office is located has three floors above ground and one below ground. The buttons in the elevator are laid out in the following fashion:

         []2            []3

         []LL           []1

The most common destination is floor 1, the lobby. However, something like three out of four patients using the elevator get in and press “LL” when they want to leave the building. After a moment of thought, they invariably then reach out and press the “1″ button.

The root of the problem is that instead of calling the below ground floor a “basement” like nearly every other building the world, this elevator terms the basement the “lower level.” While I’m sure this does wonders for the psychology of the workers who occupy the basement…err..lower level, it really hoses everyone else.

When patients enter the elevator, they see “L,” and because they are invariably thinking about their recently ended appointment, their Brain shortcuts to “L = Lobby. We want the lobby to leave the building. You, Hand. Press the button on the lower left.”

About this time, the Eye gets through to the Brain on the backup circuit and says, “Hey, dummy. That’s ‘LL,’ not ‘L’. Chances are that doesn’t mean lobby.” You can usually see people refocusing their attention on the buttons and the sign above them about at this instant. The Brain asks the Eye for a second or third glance at the whole mess as it processes the facts. Then, the Brain tells the Hand to press the “1″ button while it instructs the rest of the Body to look slightly sheepish for the benefit of the other elevator passengers.

If the clinic could just get over its “Lower Level” obsession and get with that hip modern term “Basement” it could then rid the elevator of the confusing “LL” button label. Almost nobody gets into an elevator and presses a button labeled “B” to get back to the building lobby.

The Consumer Reports 2005 Buying Guide arrived in our mailbox today. About halfway through the book, a reasonably good sized quantity of paper is devoted to rating the various vehicles currently on the market.Each vehicle is assigned a symbol for “Predicted Reliability” and another symbol for how well the vehicle retains resale value. The next field is a brief general comments field.

While eating my lunch today, I was scanning through the book and started reading writeups of various vehicles. The writeup for the Ford Excursion is an absolute killer:

Designed to be the largest SUV on the road, the Excursion is a clumsy, fuel-guzzling behemoth with a noisy engine, atrocious fuel economy, an uncomfortable ride, and marginal brakes.

No, don’t hold back, CR. Tell us what you really think.

Maybe someone can ask Ford engineers exactly what they were thinking when they designed a huge vehicle with “marginal brakes.” Did the idea of a gigantic vehicle that has trouble stopping really strike a chord with a focus group somewhere? Was the focus group composed entirely of demolition derby attendees? Didn’t anyone think to run that idea by a lawyer familiar with the concept of liability?

The “Big Vehicle That Can’t Stop Too Well” brought to you by Ford, the same folks who brought you the “Vehicles with Exploding Tires and Rollover Problems.”

We’ve been busy since the last time I wrote in this space.Wednesday (05 Jan) and Thursday (06 Jan), Madison got just short of nine inches of snow. Considering the slight dustings that had preceded it, that snow was actually welcome. Sure, we had to shovel the walk no less than five times over the two days, but that was worth it for a good volume of snow.

Over the weekend, we were finally able to get out and do some cross country skiing. Over the summer, I equipped myself with various bits and pieces of nordic ski gear by shopping end-of-season sales and garage sales. In late October, I had one of the local ski shops integrate my bindings on to my skis so I would be ready when the snow flew. Ha, ha. No need to hurry, certainly as the city of Madison didn’t get more than a dusting until Christmas (when we were in South Dakota) and that snow was all but gone when we returned.

So, both Saturday (08 Jan) and Sunday (09 Jan) morning, Sarah and I took our skis and Dalla out for some Nordic action. Dalla still doesn’t completely understand the concept of nordic skiing, but she does like the fact that we cover ground faster with skis than on foot. Sometimes she is guilty of stopping on the trail just in front of our moving skis. At that point, we either crash into her or fall of the trail to avoid said crash.

Regardless of Dalla’s lack of understanding, we all had fun getting out and about.

Saturday night (08 Jan), we had some friends over for dinner. They recently had a child, and this was the first time said child had ventured over to our place. We were curious to see how Dalla would react to a small person invading her living space. She does very well with small children (much better than with adults, actually), but we didn’t want her to get the idea that the baby was prey. She was curious about the kid (and especially about the odors coming from his posterior), but not terribly jealous or concerned. I’m not at all used to having kids in the house, so every time he made a noise while dozing, I thought it was the dog.

Monday, Sarah and I finally, mostly, finished up our attic insulation project. We rented a U-Haul truck, picked up an insulation blower from a local hardware store, and spent three hours blowing cellulose insulation into our attic. When we bought the house, we learned that parts of the attic were generally uninsulated. As we worked on various projects related to getting our skylights installed and finished, we learned that only part of the attic was uninsulated. The other part was wildly uninsulated.

So, we’ve been working constantly towards getting another R-19 or so insulation up in the attic. Finally, we reached a point where all or most of the prep work had been done and it was time to get the insulation in the attic already. Considering how rapidly the weather turned frigid (two days later), we got that work done just in time.

Tuesday night, I made it a point to attend and speak at a local government committee meeting. The Mayor of Madison is ramrodding through a ridiculous idea, and even though it was tilting at windmills, I felt obliged to trot downtown and speak my piece.

After the meeting, we met up with some friends of ours who were in town checking out the medical school. They live in Seattle currently and I hadn’t seen them for a very, very, very long time. We had a drink together at a downtown bar, and then we went home while they went back to their hotel.

Wednesday night, the same friends came over to our house for dinner before starting on their long trip back to Seattle. It was fun to show them our house, sit around a dinner table with them, and generally spend time with them. Hopefully, the enjoyed Madison enough to consider putting UW-Madison near the top of their list.

The weather of late has been South Dakota cold with temperatures well below 10 degrees. The past few days, we’ve gotten up to temperatures well below zero.

Despite the frigid weather, we went hiking Sunday morning with the dog at one of the local state parks. Saturday afternoon, we took our skis and skied around Capitol Square. A qualifying event for the US Olympic Ski Team was being held in Madison in a rather unique format. 80 truckloads of snow were made by one of the local ski areas. That snow was then trucked to Madison, and dumped around the Capitol building late Friday night and early Saturday morning. By Saturday morning, a groomed cross-country ski track had been completely laid around the Capitol.

There was a time set aside for the public to use the temporary course, so we put the skis on top of the car and drove downtown to give it a go. Even though it was supposed to cost us $5 a head, we just walked on to the course without paying and no one ever asked us for a dime. We made a couple of trips around the Capitol (each lap took about fifteen minutes), enjoyed the novelty of the experience, and went home.

Now that the Vikings season is over, we can talk about just how good the team actually was this year.The Vikings have numerous problems on both sides of the ball.

Obviously, the defense is the biggest, and most obvious, problem. The cornerbacks, minus Winfield, generally can’t cover anyone. The safeties made almost zero plays this year. The linebackers as a squad are a mess. Individually, they’re generally average to below average. The defensive line, minus Kevin Williams, is a collection of journeymen and stiffs. The defensive coordinator either doesn’t know or doesn’t care to tailor the defense towards what little talent can be found on the defensive side of the ball.

The defensive secondary, minus Winfield, could be replaced this off-season and no one would shed a tear. Brian Williams makes just enough plays to start ahead of the other stiffs on the team, but I’m not sure he would start on any other team in the league. Willie Offord is a decent special teams player, but that doesn’t make him a serviceable strong safety. Brian Russell is a waste of a roster spot. Just how many sure interceptions does the guy have to drop before Tice takes him off the field? The other guys wearing cornerback numbers, and often lining up as cornerbacks (but not playing like professional cornerbacks) should be jettisoned this offseason. There must be guys the
Vikes could sign this offseason for less money who can play (or not play) just as well. At least the Vikes would be getting their money’s worth for a change.

The linebackers were a complete waste this year. The number of plays they made could be counted on my fingers and toes. To catalog the number of mistakes the linebackers made this year you’d need a commercial database running on some big iron servers. EJ Henderson looks great in uniform and lost on the field. Dump him. Chris Claiborne is slow and very rarely makes an impact play. Usually, he gets blocked out of the play or is chasing it from behind. Dontarrious Thomas needs a brain implant. Newman and the others who saw time at linebacker should be subject to the same treatment as the cornerbacks above. They should be dumped and the Vikes should give undrafted free agents a chance to compete for the spot. At least those guys would want to play.

The defensive line could be better. Udeze showed us little to nothing this year. In fact, he lost his starting spot to another (relatively unheralded) rookie. Mixon makes just enough plays to stay on the team. Lance Johnstone is nothing special. I’m not sold on guys who are trotted on to the field only for pass rushing downs. The great players stay on the field in every situation. In addition, the front four very rarely got much pressure on the quarterback without help from blitzing linebackers and the like. That lack of pressure more than once fatally exposed the Vikings cornerbacks for the frauds that they are.

Ted Cotrell, the Vikings defensive coordinator, should be dumped this offseason, as well. Clearly, his scheme is nothing special. The Vikes finished 28th overall in defense. It seems to me that we can only go up from there. Let’s give someone else a shot.

In addition, his defense in the game against Philadelphia today was inexcusable. How many times did the mediocre Philly wideouts catch a ball without a Viking within forty feet of them? Twenty times? Against what, exactly, were the Vikings defending? The fake end-around? If I hadn’t been able to see him with my own eyes, I might have thought Brian Westbrook was wearing an invisibility cloak for all the attention he got from the Vikings defense. Supposedly, Westbrook was being doubleteamed. Maybe the guys doing the doubleteaming were on the sidelines? They certainly weren’t on the field.

On the offensive side of the ball, the picture is better, but far from perfect.

The Vikes need to seriously consider revamping their offensive line. Sure, Matt Birk is a stud, but everyone else on the offensive line is average, at best. McKinnie was a bust of a draft pick. Let’s just admit it, so we can get busy trying to find someone else who actually wants to make millions of dollars playing left tackle for the Vikes. The Vikings running game this year virtually disappeared (once you subtract Culpepper’s running yards, the team’s yards-per-carry average just plummets) and a big part of that can be laid at the feet of the offensive line. The holes just weren’t there this year. Walter Payton wouldn’t have gotten 1000 yards behind the line the Vikes fielded this year. I can’t count the number of times a running back hit the line looking for a hole, but all he saw was the big butts of his linemen and some (unblocked) defensive guys looking for his head.

A portion of the running game’s failure can be laid at the feet of Scott Linehan, the Vikings offensive coordinator. Sure, the Vikes go downfield fairly often, and they even succeed once in a while. But when the team just needs to grind out sixty yards on the ground to kill the clock, don’t call Linehan. The first time a run fails to go for ten yards, Linehan retreats into a passing mentality for the next thirty plays. Good running teams don’t try running once, get frustrated, and give up for the rest of the game. In addition, Linehan seems to have an unnatural attraction for the draw. Unfortunately, defenses know it, and the draw, as drawn up by Linehan, and as called by Linehan, rarely works. In Linehan’s mind, the pass is used to setup the pass while the run is used to setup the punt team.

The Vikings also need to take a very long look at the running back position. I know of no teams that have had success using a platoon at the running back position. Successful teams have one featured back that gets the lion’s share of the carries. Using Michael Bennett for a couple downs, then Moore, then Smith, then Bennett, then Smith, then Moore, etc., etc., etc. does nothing to help any of the three develop a rhythm. Onterrio Smith doesn’t seem to be the great back that the coaching staff is always touting. The number of big plays he came up with this year could be counted on one hand. Bennett has good speed and generally creates more big plays than Smith. Unfortunately, he is prone to running directly into his own linemen’s asses, rather than around them. I don’t know if that is because he lacks field vision, creativity, or simply cannot move his hips very well, but since we have an alternative, it seems that we ought to explore it. Moore is probably the best back the Vikes have at this point. So, it made sense for the team that he spent most of the year on the sidelines after proving his worth during several games early in the season. Hopefully, Tice and Co. will pull their collective heads out of…um…somewhere during the next training camp and give Moore a chance to be the Vikes number one back. Regardless of who they choose, the Vikes would do well to dump their running-back-by-committee approach.

Assuming that the Vikes can keep Culpepper, they are set for at least the next eight years at quarterback.

Marcus Robinson as a free-agent pickup was nothing special. Kelly Campbell lost relevance once the Vikes no longer had him returning kickoffs and stopped throwing him the ball. Moss is a punk, but when properly motivated, can still play the game like few others. The problem, more often than not, is getting him motivated. Apparently, $6 million dollars per annum just doesn’t motivate him like it would most people. Burleson is a keeper and should start every game as the number two wideout next year.

The Vikes desperately need to sign an actual field-goal kicker. It’s all well and good that Morten Anderson rarely misses from inside forty yards. However, it sure would be nice to have a kicker with a leg for a change. How long has it been since the Vikes had a field goal kicker who could make one from beyond forty-five yards? Eight or ten years, certainly. Even Sarah, for whom the Vikings are nothing more than a peripheral topic of conversation said she is “tired of hearing about Morten Anderson’s limited range.”

Darren Bennett, the punter, ought to be let go. He is washed up. Once upon a time, he was special. This year, he was barely serviceable.

The Vikes then, were about as good as their 8 and 8 record indicated. Oh well, the 2005 season starts in just a bit over seven months.

An Open Letter to Madison-area Drivers:My fellow Madisonians,

As most of you have undoubtedly noticed, the City of Madison and the surrounding areas got several inches of snow during the last 36 hours.

What you may not know, however, is that the presence of snow on the ground does not automatically suspend all legal, social, practical, and ethical constraints on your automobiles.

Perhaps you remember when the city got snow last year. Many of you drove too fast for conditions and caused collisions with your fellow citizens. If you were lucky, no one was hurt by your reckless actions.

The fact that snow makes roads slippery is something of an unchanging fact from year to year. That means that if snow is on the road this year, the road will be slippery just like last year.

As a result, you may want to slow down a bit. If you usually speed, err, I mean drive, 35 miles per hour down the street in front of my house, chances are good that doing the same thing with snow on the ground will get you a personal audience with a tow truck driver and an insurance adjuster or two.

Also, I checked with the city’s legal eagles and none of the local traffic laws have been suspended. That means you need to stop for stop signs. You still need to yield the right of way to pedestrians. Driving over medians to effect a U-turn is still verboten. If you wouldn’t do it on an 80 degree July day, don’t do it on a snowy 21 degree January day.

Here’s a helpful hint: If the snow around your parked car is piled higher than half-way up your tires, you’ll have to actually exert yourself, pick up a shovel, and shovel your car out. Your car might have a really kickin’ sound system, but that doesn’t subvert the laws of nature and physics one bit.

(Confidential to the driver of the Pontiac Bonneville that I helped push out of a driveway this morning: Try a bit of effort next time, loser. You didn’t shovel one lousy foot of your walk, much less your driveway. It was no surprise that your crappy car with street performance tires got hung up on the sludge the snowplows pushed into your driveway. I especially liked the way you, in your late twenties or early thirties, stayed in the car with the windows up while myself and a large woman in her late forties pushed your lousy car for you out of the goodness of our hearts. Your complete lack of gratitude as you drove off really warmed my heart. Don’t worry. We’ll meet again. I walk by your house every day.)

Those of you who drive SUV’s might want to check the definitions of both “All-Wheel Drive” and “Four-Wheel Drive.” See, the key word in both of those phrases is “Drive.” Just because you can travel the same speed on snowy roads as you can on dry roads does not mean that you can stop in the same distance. There is a reason that SUV owners often meet twenty at a time in the ditch. It’s because as a group, you drive too fast.

This is Wisconsin, folks. We should know better than this. If you find yourself in the ditch or involved in a collision, spend the time waiting for a tow truck observing those of us who are not similarly handicapped by a lack of good sense and see if you can mimic how we safely and politely navigate roads the winter.

Last Friday, the temperature in Madison was in the fifties. Today, Sarah and I shoveled our walk for the fourth time in twenty four hours.

During that fabulous stretch of weather last Friday, Sarah, Dalla, and I went geocaching near Lodi, WI. We started by hiking a few miles on the Ice Age Trail near Lodi. While hiking the Trail, we found two caches and Dalla got to run her little canine heart out. She only rolled in one terribly smelly thing.

We stopped in Lodi on our way to Madison and bought some landjaeger (sausage) at a butcher shop and some butter cookies from a bakery.

For New Year’s Eve, we started the evening by watching the fourth ranked and recently hapless University of Wisconsin Badgers Mens Hockey team tie (!) Yale (1-11 coming into the match).

After that, we stopped at the Churchkey Bar (a bar in an old church near the university campus) for a beer before continuing on our way to Capitol Square. While we were walking up to the Square, fireworks were launched into the sky as part of a “family friendly” celebration near the Square. So, we watched the fireworks as we walked up the street.

We ended our trek at Restaurant Magnus where El Clan Destino (a local Afro-Cuban jazz band) was playing for a none-too-steep cover charge ($10). The band was really tight that night. They played some truly excellent Latin jazz that had people dancing amongst the tables. As we were walking back to Capitol Square to find a cab home later, we walked by a cheesy Irish bar packed with people who had paid upwards of twenty dollars to listen to a bad cover band play bad 80′s music. I felt sorry for those folks.

My curling team finished up the first half of our season with a 3-4 record. Considering that we started the year 1-4, we felt that record was an improvement. Last week, we won the game 10-1. Previously, we were often on the losing end of a score like that. If we can continue our strong play through the second half, we can still make the playoffs for our league.

As I noted above, Madison finally got snow yesterday. Over the course of the previous 36 hours, Madison got between three and six inches of snow. It is nice to finally not be able to see brown, dead grass as far as the eye can see. Fresh white snow hides many an ugly neighborhood yard.

If the snow sticks around, Sarah and I would like to get out on our cross country skis this weekend.

Stephen King’s Song of Susannah is possibly his lamest effort ever.Coming on the heels of some of King’s best writing in Wolves of the Calla and (one of my all-time favorite novels) Wizard and Glass, I had really high expectations for this book. Unfortunately, this book does not even begin to compare to the two volumes of the The Dark Tower saga that preceded it.

Let me start by decrying King’s lame, corny, sad, awful, unforgiveable decision to include himself as a character in the book. Ever since Sarah and I suffered through most of a Clive Cussler audiobook in which Cussler appeared as a (supposedly) suave, rich, mysterious character I have been very leery of authors who write themselves transparently into their books. King appears in the book as one of the pillars of the universe with God like powers. What claptrap.

It was difficult to soldier on through the portions of the book in which King appears. King’s appearance as a character really shattered the illusion he was trying to craft. Instead of a rich fantasy world, we’re left with Stephen King writing about himself in a too glib fashion and then futilely trying to shoe-horn that self-examination into a fantasy novel. If I wanted to find out what Stephen King thought of himself, I’d find an interview with the man. I don’t read his books because he does such a great job portraying himself in them; I read his books because he creates wonderful illusions. As soon as he destroys the illusion, there isn’t much point in continuing to read the book.

The book’s Coda is more of the same nonsense. If Kings wants to detail how the book got written, fine. Put it in an Author’s Notes section. Interested readers can then find the information while those who wish to skip it can do so. By writing the Author’s Notes into the Coda, King forces everyone to read his Notes just in case something important to the story arc is buried in there.

The other problem with Song of Susannah is that very few Things Happen in it. Plenty of Things nearly Happen. Other Things almost Happen. Heck, there is even some getting ready for Things to Happen. But if you go digging through four hundred pages of text looking for Things Happening, you’ll have to look carefully as Things don’t Happen much in this book.

In the end, Song of Susannah is four hundred pages of self-indulgent yuck and exposition. I can only hope that Things Happen in the seventh volume of The Dark Tower series or readers like myself will be left feeling like King led us down a dead-end path.