Saturday, March 27, 2004
Fee Culture
Something brewing. We're talking about doing an audio recording of a bunch of bloggers and cyberfolks reading Lessig's new book aloud and then making a CD out of it.Here's the link to Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology And The Law To Lock Down Culture And Control Creativity
Fat or Fit?
I've been both and fit is a lot more fun. We'll be on the beach all too soon. Have you thought about biting the bullet this year and getting in really good shape. You can. It's a lot easier than you think. Start by believing you can.
How It Feels Fat
When you get dressed, you go nuts trying to remember which clothes even fit, which are the fat ones, the fatter ones and the fattest ones. No matter what you put on, you look fat and you hate that. You wear dark, drab big clothes to cover all your faults. You hope nothing unbuttons or unzips on you, revealing any flab or flesh. You wish you had something that looked good on you.When you go anywhere, you know you look not so good in your clothes. You move your body and your skin and curves and muscles follow your movement by a few seconds, like pulling along a sack behind you. When you are naked, you hide under any available covers, blankets, drapes or make sure to turn out the lights. When you have to get up in front of a room of people to speak, you know your body doesn't look good and that makes you that makes you nervous and rocks your confidence, so you make sure NEVER to get up in front of a room of people.
How It Feels Fit
When you get dressed, you throw anything on, because it all fits and it all looks fine and even if it doesn't, you know you look fine underneath it. When you go anywhere, you know you look good in your clothes. You move your body and your skin and curves and muscles move with you. When you are naked, you could stand there discussing baseball scores or anything because you know you look good and your feel confident. When you have to get up in front of a room of people to speak, you know your body looks fit and strong and that cuts your nervousness by about 100% and increases your confidence by about 100%.
Outta Here But See Ya Later
People to see, places to go, house to clean, Saturday errands to run. Bye.
NetFlix
I don't use them. I don't know anyone who works there. I haven't invested in them. So with all those disclosures up front, let me say that I continue to hear total rave reviews of NetFlix. I don't know why people love them so much, but I know people do. Killer word of mouth.
Great Girl Movie Rental
Hope you have two TV's -- if the guys are going to be glued to basketball today -- go get Pride & Prejudice and check out Colin Firth's action. Oh, baby!
Tatoo Ta-doo
What's the big ta-doo lately over tatoos? I see them more and more and I can't stand them. I mean, maybe on Popeye's bicep, okay, that's all right. But otherwise I just don't get into them.Here's another How Things Work entry on how to get rid of tatoos. You mother told you so!
How Does It Feel?
Is it a woman thing? Is it a me thing? Rational explanations of how things work leave me cold. Here's a description of diving and surfacing in a submarine. The only interesting part to me is "how does it feel?!" to be in a submarine and suddenly dive or surface. What do you do, hang on for dear life? Do all the submariners (sailors?) get tossed ass-over-tin-cup if the captain decides to take it up fast?My understanding of the world is all about feeling, not about thinking about feeling.
Life With My Son
In case you wondered whether my kid has an engineer's sensibility (and if you've read my blog for more than a few weeks, you already know I have a 8-year-old mechanical whiz), here's what he asked me at breakfast over pancakes the other morning. This was a school morning. He wants me to give him a detailed answer before the school bus:"How does a nuclear reactor work? Why do they need to cool down the water inside of it?"
Car Talk: In Case You Needed To Know
A friend who thinks I should know more about car engines, has been tutoring me on how he learned about the piston engine. He tells me there are only four words to remember when it comes to car engines:SUCK--intake of air and fuel into the cylinder through valves (downstroke)
SQUEEZE--compression of fuel-air mixture (upstroke) valves closed
BANG--combustion of fuel-air mixture (downstroke) with spark plug valves closed
BLOW--burned fuel-air mixture (upstroke) exhausted through open valves
Check out this action-packed graphic.
Honestly, this is exactly the kind of stuff my kid is always asking me about. I should bookmark this.
Get Your Butt In Gear
Less is more. Not about your butt. About exercising. When I write about working out, everyone gets tired just reading about it. I don't mean you have to do some monumental workout routine with machines and weights and marathon-length runs and god knows what else.I mean -- go for a walk for 45 minutes this morning.
If you're feeling really virtuous, also go for a walk this evening for 45 minutes (after dinner is best).
And now, I'll throw down the big challenge, don't eat anything after 9:00pm.
Those three simple things done every day for a week will make you feel amazingly better.
And the walking doesn't even have to be outside -- you can do it in a mall, anywhere you can keep walking uninterrupted for 45 minutes, it doesn't matter, just do it.
[Actually, now that I reread the beginning of this, "less is more" definately applies to your butt.]
Spring Cleaning Again
Okay, I know I've been tough on you guys, but it's a spring cleaning Saturday again. Make a list like mine and then when it numbers up to 10 items, decide to just do two today. Let's not been TOO hard on ourselves.1. clean out papers in back office;
2. take too small kid clothes to Goodwill;
3. kitchen -- get rid rid of too many kitschy coffee mugs
4. closet -- fact facts, dump too small duds and dumb looking unfashions
5. bathroom -- clean junky drawer of old 1/2 empty cosmetics bottles and jars
6. take winter coats to cleaners
7. pump up air in bike tires
8. weigh yourself -- look at yourself in bikini in mirror -- think beach
9. take big winter blankets and comforters to wash at giant washer laundromat across town
10. newspaper and magazine clean-out in bathroom, bedroom, office.
I'm going to do number 2 and number 6. I'm great. Hurray for me.
I Suck As An Avon Lady
So I signed up to be an Avon Lady but this local manager lady and I just don't seem to see eye-to-eye or eye liner pencil-to-eye liner pencil or something.First she sends me an email with about 500 lines of dates and information and contests and bonuses and stuff -- with no paragraphs. It was unreadable. And this was the first email I ever got from her after having been signed up almost a month. She actually likes to leave phone messages. I don't do phone messages. I do email. I do email that is intelligible and readable. I hate people who do phone. I don't do phone for precise information, or for anything that includes real data like numbers, prices, colors of nail polish. I need email. I like a written record.
She has an email address like spam -- something like JoLo3428789 or something -- and I nearly deleted it, because it obviously didn't come from a human and then I realized it was from her, and then I opened it, but as I mentioned, it was a swirl of stuff I couldn't decipher.
And then I found a friend who actually wanted to be a customer.
She wanted to buy some nail polish.
The catalogue has a veritable beauty supply shelf full of different kinds and colors of nail polishes.
My friend asked me, "Which one lasts the longest?" that's all she wanted to know.
I decided to email the manager lady, figuring this must be her forte -- she can actually answer product questions for me and help me I thought naively. I wrote "Which nail polish lasts the longest?"
She didn't answer.
I realized I had to call her -- use the phone -- something I consider a gigantic waste of time.
I left her a message, "Which nail polish lasts the longest?"
She wasn't there.
She called back quickly and told me, "I don't know which one lasts the longest, but why don't you sell her ...." and then she told me to sell her something else. And then she went into a rant about how I hadn't placed an order this two-week period and I had to place an order and didn't I want her to send me a bunch of new catalogues for $50 dollars out of my pocket and I needed to at least place an order myself for cosmetics because I had to buy some stuff to make sure her region met their goals ... and on and on and on. It was all about what she needed.
I only needed to know, "which nail polish lasts the the longest?"
She wouldn't tell me. This must be secret information.
I told my friend, "the manager won't tell me which nail polish lasts the longest. You might want to buy some at the drug store. I don't want to sell you the wrong stuff."
Friday, March 26, 2004
Get Away Faster
I see a banner ad at the top of my email today, since I use Yahoo email, I see a lot of ads. This one has a sapphire blue ocean, a bright white sandy beach, a red and white striped beach umbrella, a sunny yellow feeling, though it might not have a crayon yellow ball of sun that I notice, but I get the beachy feeling -- it sweeps over me -- I may need to look down between my toes to check for sand. It says "Get Away Faster" and it says something else about getting 10,000 frequent flyer miles as a bonus, or some such thing.What are they selling? Unspoiled nature and worry-free days for sale. That's what it's really about, which makes me know that it assumes, rightly, that we are far from a beach on this cold spring morning and far from worry.
Frequent flyer miles hardly seem the remedy for a morning like this, and I'm still stuck on the beginning of the phrase -- Get Away Faster. It means "Run For Your Life" or maybe "Run Away From Your Life" and so you can't help wondering what kind of life we've all made for ourselves that running away from it at breakneck speed is a sound philosophy that most people reading the ad would not only be willing to agree with, but be moved, if not seduced into a bit of a early morning coffee break swoon to consider it.
What else are they selling? Sex of course and a way to escape your life. The two go hand-in-hand.
So you are Jane or Joe, sitting in your company cafeteria, a scatter of cheesy plastic furniture around you and a vending machine against the wall of equally polyurethane food on little shelves next to you, but your mind is filled with this abandoned beach scene, the beach umbrella tilted in a sexy way, away from you, the viewer. And you are left wondering what's going on behind the umbrella. You can't help but wonder.
You're wearing clothes that didn't really come out of the dryer wrinkle free, in fact, you look a little sloopy. You're watching an icy rain storm hit the not so shiny cars out on the company parking lot. The cars all look grey and a little dinged up. You're thinking of an 11:00 meeting where that egomaniacial tyrant in Marketing is really just rounding you all up to tell you you're a bunch of assholes and can never get anything done on time or to his liking. The heel on your right shoe is in need of repair and you have a sad place inside that you contemplate for a few seconds -- why it is you always scrape your right heel like that in a shameful, "don't hurt me, I didn't do it!", babyish way. If you dare to go there, you wonder, "Did my mother do that to me, make me feel that shitty about myself that I still scrape my foot like that when I've done something wrong?"
If you are Joe, behind the umbrella, there is a model, you can't remember her name but she's topless and getting pretty impatient with you for not staying with her and making love to her and instead you have to go to some idiotic meeting at 11:00. She doesn't get it and is not willing to let you go. You yield to her finally and it's delicious. No one else in the cafeteria is begging you to let her give you a blow job, last you noticed.
If you are Jane, behind the umbrella, there is a model, you can't remember his name and he's been very romantic all morning, and teasing your clothes off you, making love to you, very skillfully, you've come twice -- no explaining or pointing out any anatomical roadmap thank you -- he's really good -- you knew he would be, since he doesn't speak English anyway, that was a tip off. And then he wants to take you shopping in town, ride you around on his motorbike and buy you stuff. He doesn't know what the hell an 11:00 meeting is.
STOP ... I'd like the audio of someone tearing an old record player needle across an old Hawaiian hula dance LP to stop the music, but that's so passe, a record player, sorry ... anyway, stop the fantasy for a second and think to yourself, "Wait a minute, maybe I could get out of here, really get out of here, maybe I could make a life I liked and not have to get away faster. Maybe I could have a life I liked so much I wouldn't ever want to run away from it." Now you are really getting away. Now you're thinking straight. Straight out of there in a few months, into a life that might be real and fun and really fun. Some people do it, you know that. There must be a way to find out how they pull it off. And you think of that uncle of yours. Everyone thought he was half nuts, but he had a life that guy, he had a wonderful life and you decide right then and there ... you'll figure out how he did it and you'll do it too.
Worth Your While
So excited about the WORTHWHILE Launch. We're live the first Monday in April. You didn't think we were so dumb as to launch on April Fool's Day, did you?A shiny new blog and new magazine all about work that really matters -- profits passion and personalities.
Fine blog writing from me, David Batstone, Catherine Fredman, Tom Peters, Rebecca Ryan, Kevin Salwen, Anita Sharpe, David Weinberger.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Dick Clarke's American Bandstand
A week ago most of us didn't know who Richard Clarke was and this week he seems to be changing the course of American History.The emotional apology by Clarke and total absence of Condoleezza Rice and everyone else at the top of the Bush White House at the 9/11 commission hearings sends strong messages.
Clarke, whose credibility has been questioned by the Bush administration, began his testimony on Wednesday to a commission probing the attacks by asking for relatives' forgiveness, prompting cheers, gasps and sobs from the packed hearing room on Capitol Hill.
"It's the first time we have had a public apology by any of the officials that were in office on that terrible morning," said Patty Casazza, who lost her husband when a hijacked plane rammed into the World Trade Center in New York.
"An apology goes a long way to healing the wounds and moving forward," Casazza told ABC's "Good Morning America" program.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites). Relatives of those killed have been pushing for answers and some have voiced criticism over the Bush administration's cooperation with the commission.
Clarke, who served the last four U.S. presidents, has incensed the White House by saying publicly and in a book published this week that President Bush (news - web sites) did not take the terrorism threat seriously enough and that more could have been done to prevent the attacks.
Clarke, who resigned 13 months ago, said the Clinton administration was active in tracking Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network but the Bush administration, which took office in January 2001, did not consider the issue urgent.
EMOTIONAL MOMENT
In his testimony, Clarke turned around to directly face the relatives and said: "Those entrusted with protecting you, failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard but that doesn't matter because we failed."
He added: "I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness."
Beverly Eckert, whose husband died in the World Trade Center, said she "totally broke down" at Clarke's apology.
"It was a very emotional moment. As Patty said, no one has ever apologized. Most of the witnesses who come to these hearings come with, I would categorize them, as rather self-serving statements and everything they tried to do.
"He's the only one who said we tried our best but we failed ... not only did he apologize, he asked for our forgiveness. That meant a lot," said Eckert, who along with Casazza is part of an activist family group demanding answers to how the Sept. 11 attacks occurred.
--Reuters via Yahoo News
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Anvil
I was thinking about death the other day, having trouble finding the words to write about how vibrant a life at full throttle can be, and then just end so quickly.Luckily, a wonderful writer I know put it exactly the right way.
You see how fragile life is, despite being so robust. How quickly and unexpectedly it's over. The trajectory arches up like a rainbow... and falls like an anvil off a cliff. One must remember to live.Unluckily, his fine writing was due to the loss of his roommate and friend Tony Meilandt.
--John Perry Barlow
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Conference Blogging
I'm trying to decide what I think about bloggers covering conferences, especially as David Weinberger and many others are at Esther Dyson's PC Forum event in Arizona this week.I'm not there, but at home, though I am often at conferences like these, so the shoe is on the other foot for once.
Here's some ideas.
1. Does any one really need real time conference coverage?
2. I find real time coverage of a conference is more interesting to other bloggers who happen to be attending the conference and have a sense of the "context" and place itself.
3. I find the coverage is useful when I happen to run into it later on Google and I'm researching a specific subject and it happens to fall into that area.
4. I miss the conference bloggers regular writing and I would venture to say their conference blogging is almost always less interesting than their regular writing, unless there is just spectacular earth-shattering news happening at the conference.
How Court TV Stays In Business
Sometimes, you read things you wish you could invent as a fiction writer, but you know that no one in the whole wide world would believe them.Start with a mansion in the Hamptons in Long Island, then take a millionaire husband and his wife in a bitter divorce, add an handsome young electrician who installed the security system for the mansion, find the husband brutally murdered a few days before the divorce is final. Add a wedding -- you guessed it, the electrician marries the widow -- add a Russian nanny, well ... you read it.
How's a fiction writer supposed to compete with stuff like this! There oughta be a law!
Monday, March 22, 2004
Eat, Don't Drink And Be Merry
Renewed my vows over at the blog Joi Ito started called "We Quit Drinking." Go check it out. And "BRAVO!" to Joi who still isn't drinking.
Two Can Play At This Game -- Blueblood or Blue-Collar?
They just planted a piece about John Kerry's $33 million worth of homes. Now how many homes do the Bushes own and what's the rent on that joint at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue anyway? Last I checked they had property in Greenwich, Connecticut, Jupiter Island, Florida, Kennebunkport, Maine, and Crawford, Texas. I've got to verify that, I might be wrong. But that's the best part of the game. When you play BLUEBLOOD OR BLUE-COLLAR from Rove Gaming Industries, you needn't be constrained by telling the truth! You can make up anything you like!This is a game called BLUE BLOOD OR BLUE COLLAR -- and Bush thinks he can win it with a bio like this! There is nothing blue-collar about Bush. Believe me, I know, since he grew up mostly in my town Greenwich, Connecticut and the Texas thing is just a nice photo op background that helps him keep his "good ol boy" image in play.
A Matter of Style
I threw out a challenge to a friend of mine who blogs really wonderful LONG posts every few weeks. I asked him to post EVERY DAY THIS WEEK with blog posts no longer than ONE PARAGRAPH. I really don't think he can pull it off.It was just a way to open up a discussion of how ENTRENCHED we are in our particular blogging styles. The way we blog is as much part of our "brand" as WHAT we blog about.
So here are some equally insane things you'll probably never see on some well known blogs:
-- Scoble starts blogging 3-page posts every three weeks and nothing in between;
-- Instapundit relocates to Manhattan and stops writing about law and politics, focuses solely on hip hop;
-- Jeneane stops writing about her family and friends, attends nothing but conferences and posts detailed minutes of every BrainyCon, all the latest A List blogger sightings and arcane discussions of telephony practices;
-- Rageboy goes all text/no graphics;
-- Shelley gets married, starts blogging only recipes and occasional sexy stories about how much she adores her new alpha male husband and stops writing about technology;
-- Doc blogs no headlines (agh! that even scares me -- please Doc, don't ever do that, I love your headlines);
-- Dan Gillmor starts a blog for Vogue Magazine, forcing him to use the word "wireless" only in the context of women's brassieres;
-- Jarvis stops blogging (yikes! don't ever do that!);
-- Joi Ito stops travelling, moves to Cleveland, opens a gas station and blogs about the people who cruise in for gas and windshield wiper fluid.
-- Winer goes to MIT to blog;
-- Weinberger closes down Joho and starts blogging for Disney under the stealth identity "The Nutty Professor" on subjects like The Flubber Echo Chamber;
-- AKMA starts a new blog called Oy Vey, recounting his conversion to the Jewish faith;
-- I start posting late at night, never early in the morning, about the merits of celibacy, my fascination with World War I aviation trends and the future of Linux.
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Good To Be Google
And here's the Newsweek article: "Let's face it—it's good to be Google. Every minute, worldwide, in 90 languages, the index of this Internet-based search engine created by these Stanford doctoral dropouts is probed more than 138,000 times. In the course of a day, that's over 200 million searches of 6 billion Web pages, images and discussion-group postings."
Gays Non-Issue For Republicans
Ends up Mary Cheney, the vice president's openly gay lesbian daughter thinks the Republicans will come around to embracing gays.Here's a quote from her:
"Working together, we can expand the Republican Party's outreach to nontraditional Republicans," she said in the statement. "We can make sexual orientation a nonissue for the Republican Party and we can help achieve equality for all gay and lesbian Americans."Why do I get the feeling this probably won't happen.
Hmmm, just a hunch.
Thank Goodness Dick Cheney Supports Gays
Glad to know Dick Cheney is cool with gays and gay marriage I figure. It only makes sense, what with his daughter Mary Cheney being opening gay.Or maybe I've got a few of the facts mixed up here. Better check on them.
Bush's Brilliant Web Strategists
Do any of the links on this site work, or did I miss something? Mary Matalin's site says "full site coming in October 2003" but I'm not holding my breath.And then there's this about Karl Rove -- our favorite election terrorist -- willing to make up anything, launch any bomb, assassinate anyone's character. Why doesn't he have a blog? Roveblog would be very cool.
Email Hemail Shemail Things I Hate
When email was brand new technology, reasonable people wrote articles about net etiquette to get newbies on the same page with them when it came to "best practices" for writing and using email. Today I was thinking about how people still write perfectly impossible email and don't use it the right way, even now that it's so common. I have a few pet peeves about email and I wish everyone shared them, so we could all work on stamping them out.1. Please don't ask me 5 questions in one email, please send me 5 emails with one question in each. Is that nutty? You'll have a much better chance that I might answer 4 right away and eventually answer the 5th which might require some thought or research. If you glob a million things into one email and one is in need of reflection -- I don't answer the message, thereby not answering ANY of the 5 points.
2. Please don't assume I remember the name of your husband (Tom), your son (Tommy), your dog (Tomahawk), your goldfish (Tom-Tom), and feel free to say "My son Tommy killed his goldfish Tom-Tom yesterday!" instead of "Tommy killed Tom-Tom yesterday!" and I have to ask "YOUR SON KILLED HIS DAD?"
3. Please don't assume I remember who the hell you are or where the hell we met -- or that I'll mind if you decide to describe it in detail -- PLEASE DO, especially if you have a common name. I hate it when I get an email that says, "Hi, it's me Dave, I love what you said about Alpha Males." Dave who? And I said something where? In my blog, in person, at a reading, in a magazine??? And what did I say? Try this instead, "Hi, I'm Dave, Stephanie's friend -- remember we met briefly at that bar in Cambridge called NOIR, during the blizzard on Valentine's Day weekend. I loved it when you told Stephanie she needed to let an Alpha Male kiss her any way and any WHERE he wanted."
4. And my most peeving pet peeve of all email traditions. The frigging email arrives from Mr. and Mrs. Jones -- this is due to free email accounts married people get with cable modem and DSL packages -- and I don't know if the email is from MR OR MRS JONES?!?! What, email is just so hard to get, you can't afford to have YOUR OWN EMAIL? I read two things into this -- both of which I can tell you are loathsome to consider and makes me want to dump both people as potential friends. By sharing conjugal email are you telling me "We are so bonded to one another and so psychologically healthy we speak with one voice and keep no secrets?!" Yeah, right, sure. This attitude I call Marital Macho -- "We're so married and you're so not!" Or worse, "We're so emeshed I can't imagine doing anything without my spouse glued to my hip." Get your own email, lovebirds -- if you ever want me to answer it. It's like sharing one another's panties ... pretty spooky shit ... but then again, maybe you do that in your marriage? Please don't even tell me, MR. AND MRS. JONES, I don't want to know the details!
5. Then there's my favorite "Mr. Memorandum" whose emails don't even get started without 6 paragraphs for setting the scene. Add about 17 more paragraphs to air his opinion and closing arguements add the requisite 5 more paragraphs. An email is SHORT, SWEET and TO THE POINT. And life, like email, is short too -- anyone mention that to you ever?
6. And God save us from the long-winded emailer who is unfamiliar with THE CARRIAGE RETURN. Yes, you've all seen these emails -- they are one long run-on gob of text. Never a break, never a paragraph, just on and on and on for the whole page. Try a little white space ... PLEASE?!
7. And then there are those clever email addresses like DADDYSDARLING@aol.com or LEADERSHIPMAN@yahoo.com or D4T4CODERGIRL@verizon.com and they don't include the person's real name and you end up having to reply, "Hi, Leadershipman" (read: moron) instead of knowing what the person's actual name is.
Okay, is it just me, or do you run into these things and want to vomit too?
Prodigal Son and Riotous Living
The sermon at church today was about the prodigal son today. Really fun to see it acted out by the youth group all decked out in sexy bad boy leather jackets and carrying boom boxes down the church aisle.The older well-behaved son asking the dad, "what do you mean, you're throwing HIM a big party after he's been away wasting all your money and getting into trouble. Why do I even bother being good?!?"
The younger son, "Hey, Daddy-o, I'm home! Let's party!"
It's not about a wild party guy cruising back into town and always getting off the hook, as some of the older son-types would have you think. It's about God's forgiveness and extravagant love always being there for you. You can screw up big time and still be taken back.
But I've always found the basic truth of the story compelling as it exists in real life. The real-life stories of really bad guys being the life of the party, breaking hearts, not paying off their debts, dropping the ball at times of committment or responsibility and STILL being welcomed back into the inner circle is everywhere you look. There's just something more fun about that story. Maybe the prodigal son makes us feel simultaneously holier-than-him AND ultimately forgiveable, no matter how bad we might be. If that's the God who runs this Disneyland, we know we're in for a fun ride.
Asian Women Who Kick Anime Ass
Watching the fight scene from MULAN. Great movie. The girl soldier sends her big brute of an enemy flying off the roof with an ancient Chinese dragon rocket in his belly. Don't mess with Mulan boys! Also, how can you lose with Eddie Murphy as her tiny dragon lizard sidekick?!Here's what Roger Ebert wrote at the time it came out in 1998:
The visual style breaks slightly with the look of modern Disney animation to draw from Chinese and Japanese classical cartoon art; in the depiction of nature, there's an echo of the master artist Hiroshige. In a scene where the Hun troops sweep down the side of a snowy mountain, I was reminded of the great battle sequence in Sergei Eisenstein's ``Alexander Nevsky.'' There are scenes here where the Disney artists seem aware of the important new work being done in Japanese anime; if American animation is ever going to win an audience beyond the family market, it will have to move in this direction, becoming more experimental both in stories and visual style.
Animation often finds a direct line to my imagination: It's pure story, character, movement and form, without the distractions of reality or the biographical baggage of the actors. I found myself really enjoying ``Mulan,'' as a story and as animated art. If the songs were only more memorable, I'd give it four stars, but they seemed pleasant rather than rousing, and I wasn't humming anything on the way out. Still, ``Mulan'' is an impressive achievement, with a story and treatment ranking with ``Beauty and the Beast'' and ``The Lion King.''