April 09, 2005

Saturday April 9, 2005 • Howard Tayler

Imagine a hero who is part Indiana Jones, part James Bond, and part McGyver... got that in your head? It's absurd, I know. His name is Dirk Pitt, and Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels are a guilty pleasure. So guilty, in fact, that I haven't bothered to read more than two or three. They were fun, but after a while the formula wore on me.

Sahara opened on Friday, and I realized that the Big Screen is where Dirk Pitt belongs. That's where we NEED formulaic entertainment (unless you're a REAL movie critic and want to be intellectually challenged over a meal of popcorn and carbonated sugar-water, you weirdo. Go see a PLAY, for crying out loud.) I don't know how Clive Cussler's legions of Dirk Pitt fans will respond to the movie, but the average middle-of-the-demographic-road American male is going to have a grand time.

I want to spoil it for you (but I won't) by telling you about all the cool bits where I realized that it was a good thing I left my disbelief at home, suspended from those clear lego crystals that were the "suspension of disbelief engines" for all my childhood spaceships. There's no way I could have kept my disbelief suspended during Sahara. Not with pockets FULL of legos. It was outrageous. It was ridiculous. It was lots and LOTS of fun. Like the one part with the helicopter, and the civil war cannon, and... oh. I told you I wouldn't. Well, never mind then. There probably wasn't a cannon anywhere to be seen.

In completely unrelated news, I have a new-to-me laptop running SUSE LINUX 9.3 Professional with the Novell Linux Desktop installed. This is the latest and greatest (and beta-est) code from my former employer, and I must say, the install was a breeze. It auto-detected everything on my Compaq Armada m300, and everything worked. When I thought there was a network problem, it turned out that the problem was with Comcast, whose website was the only one I could reach, and which did NOT tell me "we're having technical difficulties. Please be patient." Bozos.

Are you interested in having me come to your city? Your convention? Your HOUSE? Pay my way and pay my stay, and we can make it happen. The BEST way is to convince the convention organizers that I'm worthy of "GoH" status, but there are alternatives. Email me if you've got an event in mind.