Hey, I went to see Dark Blue last weekend!

Yeah? How was it?

So-so. It starts quite well: we are shown corrupt LAPD detectives, how they blackmail the people on the judicial system to obtain warrants, how others couldn't give a rat's ass who the police takes down as long as it's a criminal...

Uh-huh, uh-huh...

And then the movie puts these corrupt detectives through the grinder, giving them moral dilemmas that really make them sweat...

Yeah, yeah...

And the suspense! It gets thick towards the end of the movie; made me think of ol' Uncle Hitch: "I hope it lasts."

Hot diggity!

Yeah! And then by the end of the movie everything goes to fuck by a "Hollywood ending" of clumsy staging and ridiculous redemption.

What the...? Crap, man! Crap!

Exactly my thoughts about it.

-----Original Message----- From: Charly Z Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2003 1:56 PM To: David Edelstein [mailto:movies@slate.com] Subject: "Dark Blue" Mr. Edelstein, I'm having some trouble getting my mind around this film. Like you say, it's tempting to forgive it's clunky last act due to the strength of what goes on first. I liked this movie, despite recognizing these shortcomings. I tried to compare this response to the one I had with "Training Day," which is less conventional (in my opinion) to "Dark Blue." But I enjoyed "Day" less than "Blue." Perhaps the "Blue" pill was so finely sugar-coated I just had to swallow it. A shame. Two observations on the scene with the little girl: 1) I think she was actually Hispanic, not African-American. 2) Did her bottle really break apart in slow-motion? Maybe it's a matter of perception, but I don't remember it breaking sooooo slooooowlyyyyy. Cheers, Charly

Monday's starting to turn into recycling day around here. Maybe we should make that an official event.

What are you talking about?

I have another old Plastic entry to reuse...

Another! What do you think this is; the compost heap?

Well, if it smells like one...

Ha-ha, very funny.

Oh, c'mon! Last time I did a good job, if I may say so myself.

No you can't.

As I was saying, last week I gave it some value added by commenting around it.

Ah! So... have you got any "value added" to provide this time around?

Uh... Er, well...

Aha! Gotcha!

Buzz off.

Wussy.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bubble

March 10 marked the one-year anniversary of the peak of the NASDAQ Stock Market, when it closed at 5,048.60. Well, what a long, weird ride it has been. Last Tuesday (3/6/2001), NASDAQ closed 56% down from that peak, and the finger pointing has begun: who's to blame for the bubble bursting? ZDNet has come with its own answers: Among the guilty, they find "business publications that canonized the rich," "investors... succumbing to greed," "research companies and publications that spouted reports of virtually infinite growth," and "the over-reliance on stock options." And who "set us up the bomb"? The "low-cost capital" available to all comers: Historically low interest rates in the United States throughout the late 1990s, combined with an Asian currency crisis and an increasingly dreary economic situation in Europe, inspired investors to throw cash at American ventures... As the perceived cost of capital dropped, modern investors needed a place to park their cash, and they became enamored with the idea that the Internet would revolutionize commerce. But ventures like Pets.com and Boo.com didn't turn out to be the gold mines investors were looking for, and with loss far out sizing investment, the dream ended. Now, the dot-com wasteland is peppered with pink slip parties, the lure of stock options has made way to hard cash from executives in need of IT workers, and buzzwords like "stickiness" and "eyeballs" have followed the soggy steps of the Titanic. A year after the not-so-long boom, have we woken up and smelled the coffee? Venture capital is no longer easy to come, and (hopefully) no one would once again accept a business proposal outlined in the proverbial cocktail napkin. We're slumping our way through a may-be-may-not-be recession, and "union" is the current buzzword of e-commerce. The times are a-changing, and lo and behold, the old brick-and-mortars may be the ones to claim the spoils of the bubble. [T]he Internet Economy of 2005 will likely be full of old-world names that were largely ignored during the bubble--behemoths such as Procter & Gamble, Chevron, Coca-Cola and Boise Cascade. Welcome to the post-new economy.