Monthly Archives: January 2011

A lot of folks on the 'net are disagreeing with Farhad Manjoo's essay on why one should never insert two spaces after a period. Manjoo insisted his point was inarguable but it's being argued by many, especially Tom Lee. He has reasons other than mine but I still agree with him.

In this piece, I noted that Rocky & Bullwinkle fans were irate because the fifth season of those wonderful cartoons was only going to be released as part of a box set of all five seasons…and many of them have already purchased the first four seasons. Well, it's now been announced that Season Five will be marketed as a standalone DVD set that you can purchase without having to pay again for the other material.

That's all the following-up I have at the moment. Thank you.

Farhad Manjoo gets almost hysterical at the idea that anyone who was writing something would put two spaces after a period. He seems to feel it's worthy of the Death Penalty at the very least.

I'm undecided on whether it's wrong to use two spaces but I have decided that if you do, it's not as heinous a crime as he claims…and I think he's missing one key point. He's correct (apparently) that typographers are pretty unanimous in insisting that there be but one space after a period…but at least in some cases, I believe it's because it gives them more control when they set type. If the size, leading and font selection in a given piece of type seems cramped at the ends of sentences, it's easy for them to add spacing or just tracking there; not as easy to take it away. They're not claiming that type never reads better with a little extra spacing between sentences…just that it's preferable to make it controllable.

Then there's this: Manjoo is correct that the idea of putting two spaces after a period is a leftover from when we worked on typewriters with non-proportional spacing. He says…

Today nearly every font on your PC is proportional. (Courier is the one major exception.) Because we've all switched to modern fonts, adding two spaces after a period no longer enhances readability, typographers say. It diminishes it.

I think it depends on the font but let's get past that. Let's say it's wrong with a proportional font but right with a non-proportional like Courier. Well, guess what: We haven't all switched to modern fonts. A very large percentage of my work is in screenplays and scripts and the custom there is still for Courier.

I put two spaces after a period. There. I admit it. I've been writing professionally for more than four decades and I've always done it that way. This site is written that way, though it doesn't show because the software usually takes out the extra space. It's a habit I could probably break but then when I worked on a screenplay that uses Courier, it would look wrong…and I sure don't want the distraction of trying to remember to space twice after a period in some of my work and once in other projects. I have to do it one way or the other and I say I'd lose more from putting one space in after a period in Courier than I would by putting two in other writing…especially since the two don't always show up.

So I've decided not to try and break the habit and to go on inserting two spaces after a period when I type. If Farhad Manjoo doesn't like it, I don't care. He doesn't read this site.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has announced again (again!) that it will postpone its opening. The new date is March 15, which will make it the longest "previewing" show in Broadway history. A new ending is apparently among the planned revisions during this time.

Quick prediction: A number of Broadway critics are going to decide, "That's enough. Time to go review it!"

And it will continue to sell out, no matter what they write about it.

Our pal Bob Elisberg reminds us what a crock the Golden Globes are…though I can't get too negative about any ceremony that is sporting enough to bring Ricky Gervais in to host.

A friend wrote me this morning that America seems to have collectively decided not to blame either the Right or the Left for the shootings in Tucson. I'd sure like to believe that but my cynical side would like to see some of the more extreme accusations retracted (with respectful apologies) before I'll believe that.

And my even-more-cynical side suspects that the reason we're not for the most part blaming each other is because neither side has found a way to gain any real yardage by doing so. Supposing tomorrow, a video emerged that was made by this Jared Lee Loughner. And supposing that in it, he was expressing some pretty extreme political views, either Liberal or Conservative. How many in the other group would be saying, "The criminal is responsible for his crimes. Inflammatory political rhetoric is not responsible"? (See, the loophole in taking that viewpoint is that we never think the excesses on our side are inflammatory political rhetoric. Inflammatory political rhetoric is the bad stuff they say about us. The bad stuff we say about them is simply telling the truth…and anyway, they started it.)

As I said, I liked Obama's speech…and I am impressed that some (not all) right-wingers are grudgingly admitting it was pretty good and that it did a lot to heal and calm that particular matter. I thought Palin's was just self-destructive. And other than that, I don't think a lot changed yesterday. Everyone's still waiting to pounce on anything they can use on the other side.

Sarah Palin's speech yesterday morning was a Greatest Hits medley of all the things she does I don't like. There was the self-obsession, the insistent "Everyone did wrong except me" attitude, the divisive posturing…even a nice dose of her rambling incoherence. She quoted Reagan's famous line about how "Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them" and then went right from that to complaining that pundits and journalists were inciting hatred and violence. Don't you love it when a politician says something and then contradicts it in the next sentence? Did Palin even read the speech to herself before she started reading it off the TelePrompter?

Joan Walsh wrote a good piece called "Sarah Palin Will Never Be President" that reaffirms my opinion. Ms. Walsh also reminds us that the late William F. Buckley thought his "friend" Pat Buchanan had a strong anti-Semitic streak. A lot of what Buchanan says (like yesterday, for example) reminds us of that but I'd forgotten Buckley came to that conclusion.

I thought Obama's speech in Tucson tonight was terrific. Instead of dwelling on tragedy and pain, he made it about hope and heroism. Perhaps this was because he was delivering it at a university before a mostly-young crowd but he hit the proper tone. I then watched a little of the folks over at Fox News trying desperately to find ways to fault it (hey, it's their job) and even they couldn't come up with much. To the extent something like this can help people move from mourning to something constructive, I think the President did some good. It's been a long time since one of his speeches lived up to his early standard.

Many of you are writing to tell me how much you're enjoying the Laurel and Hardy Marathon currently in progress on Turner Classic Movies. I'm watching only intermittently because I don't have to. I (gloat, gloat) own all these films on DVD. I can have my own little Laurel and Hardy Marathon any time I like and I can see any film I choose in any order and without all those ads and trailers interrupting.

I told you about this before but it's worth mentioning again. A few years ago in England, a company issued a wonderful 21-DVD box set of about a thousand minutes worth of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The prints are for the most part, excellent. The material covered includes all their silent and sound shorts plus all but three of the features they made before they left the Hal Roach Studio. There are also alternate, colorized and foreign versions of some of the films. For a Laurel and Hardy fan, it's an absolute treasure trove.

However! For those who live in North America, there is one drawback: It's a PAL/Region 2 release, meaning that it won't play on a Region 1 DVD player, which is what you probably have if you live on this continent. Fortunately, there's a workaround: Just buy a region-free DVD player (which means it'll play anything) and you can do that from Amazon or almost any online electronics dealer. They aren't expensive. I picked one up for around $60 and it plays these DVDs with ease. This is the model I got, which is not to suggest there aren't others as good or better…or even cheaper. I've seen them as low as $35.

The DVD set itself is even less of an investment of your hard-earned dollars. When it first came out, it cost £199.99 (about $333 USD) and it's now down to £24.99, which is less than 40 bucks in American loot. If you order from Amazon UK, they'll do all the currency conversions and such. Here's a link.

This sounds like the greatest bargain ever. You get a new DVD player plus almost everything good Laurel and Hardy ever did for a hundred bucks or even less. Being an honest soul though, I must mention one thing. The rumor mill has it that there will soon be a major Laurel and Hardy set released in Region 1 for America. This is still a rumor…though reports are getting louder. I can't tell you for sure that it will happen soon or even that if/when it does emerge, it will be comparable. In terms of content, It's hard to imagine it being better. What I will guess is that it'll cost you a lot more to buy one of those than to buy the British set plus a new DVD player. That's assuming the Region 1 set comes out soon or at all. I make no assertions about that. I'm just telling you that the set I have is a great thing to own…because boy, those guys were wonderful.

Fred Kaplan on China's new stealth fighter jet.

From Rudy Panucci…

I find the F. Lee Bailey material to be unconvincing, but I'm withholding judgment until I read the book by Bernardo the Ice Dragon.

There's still a lot of interesting writing about the Tucson shootings. I pretty much agree with all that George Packer writes, particularly with the point that Republicans are trying to sell a false equivalency between their violent-themed rhetoric and any scrap of such nonsense they can find from Democrats. I also agree with many who've written that you don't have to be able to draw a clear line between someone's over-the-top political diatribes and an act of violence to argue that the diatribes are harming this country.

I see lots of people who have apparently decided firmly on what the Arizona shooter's political leanings were and — oh, my! — he belongs to the other side. I still think these people are looking at very little evidence and believing what they want to believe. We don't know what, if anything, was on this guy's mind. His widely-publicized reading list sure doesn't prove anything. One of his acquaintances said he was the kind of guy who liked to say rude or controversial things just to provoke reactions from people…and I guess I find that easy to believe about a man who walked into a public place and began madly firing a gun at everyone around him. This list of books he said he read could have been compiled with a milder but similar desire to be provocative. Just because you say you read Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto doesn't mean you actually read them or agreed with them. (You'd have to be pretty unbalanced to find a way to agree with everything in both of them at the same time.)

Sigmund Freud once supposedly said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Maybe sometimes a crazed psychotic is just a crazed psychotic. There doesn't have to be some political spin we can put on his actions that helps us in our ongoing debates. That said, I still think the inflamed rhetoric will, one of these days, lead to some tragedy where the cause-and-effect is undeniable. Even if it doesn't, it's still unhealthy.