What Kind of Dealers?

I was walking around the old neighborhood this morning, when I came across this ad from Bank of America.

I'm not sure they want to promote "dealer" services in SoMa — unless their comprehensive solutions involve getting the black tar into heroin.

Creating a New Generation of Boring Bloggers

Elliot has a portable computer from Leap Frog called MyOwnLeaptop.

He enjoys playing with it, and it's hard to complain about a laptop that costs $25 (that's a 40th the price of a MacBook Air). But I wonder about the "blog" feature.

It gives you suggestions for blog topics, including "I spent all day at the beach" and "I spent all day playing in the garden."

BORING. What message does it send to children if that's portrayed as a valid topic to blog about?

At least it doesn't recommend writing about lunch.

Bubo Declared One of the Gayest Robots of All Time

I came across this list of the gayest robots of all time on the Out.com site, via Gizmodo (thanks for pointing this out, BuboBlog Philadelphia correspondent Guy).

I was excited to see that Bubo (our site's unlicensed mascot) was chosen as one of the gayest robots. But if you click through the extensive slideshow, it appears that almost EVERY robot is one of the gayest. The list includes Kitt, HAL, Tom Servo and even Vicki from "Small Wonder." [And yet, no Data?? -ed.]

I don't know what to think anymore.

What Do Toddlers Dream About?

Every morning Elliot wakes up in a cheerful mood. As I'm taking him out of his sleep sack and hanging up his Yaya (wet from a night's worth of drool), I'll often ask him what he dreamed about.

He always gives the same answer: "Boma and Baba came and took me for a walk." (Boma and Baba are what he calls his grandparents — as with "Yaya," the names are his own neologisms.)

Same dream every time. EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. Now, either Elliot doesn't really understand what I mean when I ask about his dreams, or they're shockingly repetitive.

Sometimes when I ask for a little more detail, he'll say that his other grandmother, "Grandmama," was also there — as well as me and his mom. It sounds like he's conjuring up his own perfect little day, with all his favorite people (his baby sister Alice is noticeably absent, though).

Is that what toddlers dream about — the best day they can imagine? I hope so...even if he's not exhibiting much of an imagination.

'Make Your Own Monster'

Here's a variation on the Build-a-Bear concept: Make Your Own Monster.

The beauty of the idea: No matter how terrible your kid is at it (three eyes on one side of the face, an arm where the ear should be), you can claim it was intentional.

If only everything were like that.

'Can You Explain What Internet Is?'

By now you've probably seen this clip of the "Today" show in 1994, where Katie Couric, Bryant Gumbel and Elizabeth Vargas try in vain to understand what the Internet is.



What caught my ear was how Couric sounds clueless by dropping the "the" from "the Internet."

It's the exact opposite of how we're accustomed to mocking old and/or technically challenged people. Usually we accuse them of always ADDING "the"; e.g. "the AIDS," "the Google."

I guess it works both ways.

UPDATE: This is probably more top-of-mind for me because I just saw "The Social Network," but dropping "the" is a plot point in the movie as well.

The way the film tells it, the biggest contribution of Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) is persuading Mark Zuckerberg to remove "the" from Facebook's original name. (Well, that, and telling him to move to California.)

BuboBlog Reviews 'The Social Network'

(We went to see "The Social Network" this week — before I realized the movie is already out on DVD. D'oh. The screen we saw it on wasn't much bigger than a TV, but at least we got the experience of sitting near some old guy with a terrifying laugh.)

The problem with watching an Oscar front-runner so late is you can only really be satisfied with perfection. I had that issue with "The Hurt Locker," which didn't meet my expectations. In this case, the movie came very close to living up to the hype. It was nicely plotted, well-written and a delight to watch — with lots of great Aaron Sorkin zingers.

The film toggles back and forth between the founding of Facebook in a Harvard dorm room and the legal battles that occurred years later, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg was facing two lawsuits. The structure successfully maintains suspense, even without the courtroom theatrics that you'd typically see in a movie with so many lawyers.

Beware: The film isn't very accurate. One scene depicts a downpour in Palo Alto DURING THE SUMMER. No wonder Facebook called it a fictionalized account.

Watching anything penned by Sorkin is always a treat (I even enjoyed his short-lived show "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip"). But a few exchanges do occasionally feel overwritten. A character will make a witty aside, and then someone will comment on that, and then someone will comment on that. It was all enjoyable, so I hesitate to criticize. Perhaps instead of being too clever by half, it was only too clever by a quarter.

I found it funny that the only people who don't speak in the rapid-fire dialogue are the lawyers. (Aren't they supposed to be fast talkers?) It also was odd that Sorkin plagiarized from himself. In one scene, Zuckerberg says he could buy Harvard's Phoenix Club and "turn it into my ping-pong room." In "Studio 60," a character tells his father he could buy his house four times over and "turn it into my ping-pong room." Did Sorkin figure no one actually watched that show so it was safe to pillage from it?

I'm giving "The Social Network" my highest rating, even if I don't think it deserves the best-picture Oscar. In my estimation, nothing last year matched the ambition or execution of Christopher Nolan's "Inception."

Of course, that film is a long shot for best picture. Critical consensus has turned against it in recent months (it was snubbed in a lot of top-10 lists), perhaps in part because of how commercially successful it was. Many people also found it to be baroque and vacuous. I get that, even if I totally disagree. It's worth noting that Nolan's "Memento," which I consider the best film of the past decade, wasn't even nominated in 2001.

With that said, we're lucky to have several films this year that are perfectly respectable choices. "The Social Network," "The King's Speech" and "Toy Story 3" were all exceptional movies — and those are just the ones I've seen.

BuboBlog Rating: 4 asterisks (out of 4).