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Cruise. Tom Cruise.

May 17, 2006 /

This week’s New York Magazine Approval Matrix (which is a don’t-miss treat every week) includes this approving nugget on “Mission: Impossible III”: “The kidnapping in ‘M:I:III,’ involving spilled wine, body doubles, voice modulation, and an exploding Lamborghini—just the kind of awesome Bond-movie scene that doesn’t appear in Bond movies anymore.”

Not only is this completely true, it also gave me a realization: Tom Cruise wants to be—nay, in “M:I:III” he has become—the next James Bond.

Compare these basic facts about Bond movies (pre-Timothy Dalton, anyway) with Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt in “M:I:III.”

• Bond: Tall, dark, handsome, dapper, well-versed in etiquette and perfect comportment. Hunt: Dark, handsome (not tall), dapper, well-versed in etiquette and perfect comportment. Hunt is not British, although Cruise could work on an accent.

• Bond: Operates as a secret agent on confidential assignments revealed to no one, including the woman in his life. Hunt: Operates as a secret agent on confidential assignments revealed to no one, including the woman in his life.

• Bond: Has an incredible arsenal of gadgets and clever methods of getting into and out of difficult situations. Hunt: Has an incredible arsenal of gadgets and clever methods of getting into and out of difficult situations. Instead of geeky Q, Hunt has sidekick Luther.

• Bond: Really knows how to wear a tux. Hunt: Really knows how to wear a million-dollar rappelling contraption.

• Bond: Often goes into missions with a second agent or to finish another 00’s work. Hunt: Goes into his first mission to rescue a kidnapped agent, then finishes her work. “Mission: Impossible” used to be about a team of experts, but the latest sequel makes Hunt the main executor.

• Bond: Drives fantastic cars and visits exotic international locations. Hunt: Is seen in fantastic cars (such as a Lamborghini) and visits exotic international locations (including Rome and Shanghai).

• Bond: Knows how to shoot a gun and isn’t afraid to kill those who stand in his way. Hunt: Knows how to shoot a gun and isn’t afraid to kill those who stand in his way.

• Bond: Performs mysteriously dextrous stunts for a man in a tuxedo. Hunt: Regularly performs dextrous stunts for a man in a million-dollar rappelling contraption.

• Bond: After saving the world from near-distruction, his superiors want him to immediately get back to work, although he chooses to kick back instead. Hunt: After saving America from near-distruction, his superiors want him to immediately get back to work, although he chooses to kick back instead.

• Bond: Gets the girl. And sometimes several. Hunt: Saves the girl, in this case his new bride. Which is very un-Bond, but still.

If Cruise could nail a British accent he’d have it made. Except, of course, that being James Bond doesn’t pay nearly as well as simply being Tom Cruise.

Mobilized troops, eh?

May 16, 2006 /

“The president has laid out a carrot-and-stick approach for controlling illegal immigration, and that includes using up to 6,000 National Guard troops to beef up border security.”

Not quite the same as this, is it:

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Boring!

May 6, 2006 /

One of the more challenging aspects of keeping a blog is keeping it fresh and interesting. A general more-is-more property applies: the more frequently one posts, the easier it is to find subjects worth writing about, primarily because the point of reference is more immediate.

Right now I could very easily post about the dog-sitting I’m doing this weekend, or the NHL playoffs, which I’m following more alertly this season than I have in years. But as they haven’t previously been covered in this space, so tidbits like “the dogs are passed out now, Rudy pressed against my leg, Charley across the bed as always, but a little jealous nonetheless” will have no frame of reference. Ever notice how you have less to say to your best friend that you haven’t spoken to in a year than you do your neighbor that you see every morning? That’s the topicality problem facing the Ideapad of late.

My aim, as noted here a good five years ago, is simple: keep writing. But my once-every-two-weeks items have a necessarily different angle than the typical 10-times-a-day personal blog seen online. We’ll see if I can’t work on this site’s focus in the coming months.

Reflection

May 4, 2006 /

Five years ago today on the Ideapad: “It is enough for you to know that I am dizzily happy these days.”

Today? More on the side of contented than vertiginous, to be accurate, but no less happy. Owning a dog will do that to you.

I am also drawn to post right above that one: “One cannot understate the elation of shopping for pants after a successful diet and discovering that all the pants at one’s usual size are, suddenly, too big in the waist.” Apparently the first week of May 2001 was a good time to be me. (Note to self: keep dieting!)

Moxie

April 19, 2006 /

Me, October 2000: “But man, the bread is good.”

Me, March 2002: “They bought two petit baguettes and a pair of croissants and a pain au chocolat. … They ate their breakfast in relative quiet, drinking the bottled water instead of the champagne, enjoying their last few hours in the Parisian spring air..”

Me, February 2005: “Voila!—your baguette is piping hot and quite wonderful.”

I am back in Paris, and you, dear reader, have no idea how fucking hard it is to observe Passover right now.

Sage

April 18, 2006 /

Free wifi from next door: good

Free wifi that keeps cutting out on you unless you push the keyboard perilously close to the edge of the bed: bad

Paid wifi in the hotel with max signal: much better

Transitory

April 17, 2006 /

If you’re looking for me, I’m in New York for a few hours today (and yesterday), mid-step between vacation (out of the continental U.S.) and travel for business (also outside the States), in what seems like perpetual motion. Three trips to three different locations for three-fourths of a four-week span is more tiring than expected. Still fun, though.

So much time and so little to do…. Strike that, reverse it.

When I get too wide, they call me fat, not improving

April 7, 2006 /

Grant Barrett nails it in his assessment of the New York Times’s redesign, in which one major decision was to bust the screen width to 1000 pixels: “Hey, who said we read (or want to read) ANY web site with the browser window filling the whole screen? The only people I know who do that are n00b Windows users.”

Mind you, the Times is simply keeping up with the joneses. Many of its peers, from the Washington Post to the forward-thinking and usability-centric Cnet to the wise folks at The Economist, have expanded their screen sizes, largely to capitalize on ad revenue and space above the fold. (Full disclosure: I commended The Economist on its redesign in this space last fall, albeit with the same point I’m about to make.)

But I’m with Grant on this one. Thanks to years of Mac use, my browser windows are never set to full-size, even when I’m on Windows. Reading studies for years have said 450 pixels is the maximum optimal width for reading text, even if some people train themselves to do otherwise. Most importantly, between 25 and 30 percent of Internet users are still on 800×600 monitors, a significant audience segment.

Yet the push for real estate nudges design ever wider, regardless of the consequences—and, perhaps, the realization that a quarter of the viewing audience won’t even see the right-hand side of the screen.

My department at work just finished an audit of two dozen ecommerce websites in our competitive space. Of them, 23 had fixed-width designs between 700 and 800 pixels. The one with full-screen capability stretched its header and footer without altering the content-and-commerce area. Clearly, the optimal usability level is not yet at 1024 pixels in width.

Colleagues at magazine websites have told me their wide-screen ad space performs well, so I won’t argue against it. But I won’t argue for it, either.

Pillow talk

April 3, 2006 /

“Who sings ‘Rock You Like a Hurricane’?”

“The Scorpions.”

Pause.

“Does a hurricane really rock you?”

Tip of the day

March 14, 2006 /

If you’re a middle-aged man who loves dogs, and your way of expressing that love is to blow kisses at a cute dog who walks past you, whatever you do, please don’t make eye contact with the dog’s owner while blowing said kisses.

Ideapad