::CRASH::....I'm.....OK!!!!!!

Currently in Earphones: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Complete Recordings by Howard Shore.

So, the biggest news so far is my recent incident with a car and a bicycle. I was riding along 5th street after having lunch with Anja on the 26th, and I came to the intersection of 5th and Howard. The light being green and the walk sign on, I thought little of any oncoming cars, and indeed, there were none save one. There was a car traveling up Howard, perpendicular to me, and was making a right turn. I was on the left side of the street, and the car was going to turn across my path and continue in the direction that I came. The car appeared to be slowing down, so I sped up to make the light. As I approached the intersection, I noticed the car wasn't slowing down as fast as I had originally thought. "No problem," I thought, "I'll probably pass in front of it as it slows down before the turn." Only as I entered the intersection, and in the split second that I turned my head to watch the car come up beside me, that I realized the lady (as it happened to be) was still maintaining a good clip.

As this thought travels through my head, the front half of my bike (and my body) just squeeze by the front of the oncoming vehicle before the left side of her front bumper connects with my rear wheel. The bike flies out from under me, sliding down and to the right, while I fly (briefly) through the air and land on my left side, arms outstretched, and skid across the pavement, ending up belly-down about 7 feet from the car. I immediately do a damage check, surprisingly little damage on my right arm, some small abrasions on my right elbow. Nothing on my left arm, but I catch sight of a nasty scrape beginning above my left elbow juuuuust visible on the inside of my arm. That looks to be the worst of it, my right leg is unscathed, midsection is fine, my left leg has some odd scrapes around my sock level, and my left thigh is hurting from where I landed on my wallet. I stagger up and the lady gets out, with an immediate "Are you alright?" I reply wryly, "I'm wondering how my bike is doing."

No broken bones are apparent, but my left side is all sore and the scrape is beginning to sting through the adrenaline. The woman offers to clean off my wound, which I thankfully accept. She's calm and competent, a reflection of things to come. After swabbing my wound with an antiseptic wet wipe, she offers to patch me up, stating that she works just down the street. That happens to be on campus, and I wonder where exactly that might be at the location I'm at. My bike is similar to myself, some good whacks and bangs, but surprisingly intact. The front fork and my handlebars were out of whack; the front tire and the bars pointed in radically different directions. The chain had jumped both sets of gears but was intact. A hunk of plastic was taken out of my brake grip housing, but the grip and cable still functioned. The frame was still intact, but the worst of the damage was a bent back wheel, enough to hinder the rotation.

The lady mentioned her place of work as Hickey Gym, not too far from where we stood. Though she offered to take my bike for me, I played the usual guy and declined, choosing to limp onward with a bike that would no longer roll smoothly. Using the last of my adrenaline, I hefted the frame in my right hand and cradled my damaged left arm, setting out for the Gym. It's a short walk, but the bike got heavier as I went, and I was grateful to be able to put it down and lock it up. The woman led me to a small clinic on the first floor of Hickey, and it looked to be some sort of sports medicine/injury set up; lots of padded, long tables for people to stretch out on.

She had me sit down and immediately set to work, getting out gauze pads, antibiotic gel, numerous wraps and what I at first mistook for Iodine (eek!), but which the woman identifies as betadine (or some such), evidently not nearly as sting-y. Still suffering from the male syndrome and feeling cavalier (as there are some females in the room), I decided to belt out some Silly Wizard to distract myself from the pain of the wound cleaning. I don't know if I impressed anyone, but either the betadines mildness or my distraction was sufficient: the cleaning went without incident. She then slathered on a bunch of antibiotic, taped some gauze pads over the wound, and wrapped that further with some stretchy materiel and finally a bag of ice. Noticing my penchance for sweating profusely at nearly any exertion, the lady did ask concernedly if I was feeling faint, which luckily was not the case.

My innocent assailant and now helpful Samaritan helped me outside, and it was here that I finally got a cohesive whole of her character. I took comfort in our similarities that we both remained calm and cool in the face of the accident, an aspect indicative of her occupation as medic. While her stoic nature occluded any large emotion, I could still see her feelings of guilt and desire to make things as well as possible. I awkwardly conversed on the topic of my bike, hanging between thankfulness at the circumstances of my accident (her helpfulness and the luck of place and profession) and desire for just reparations. In the end, I accepted her offer to drive my bike to the shop and submit it for repairs. She naturally offered to pay for the repair, which I gratefully accept. After the shop, she then drove me home, and gave me some last notes and pointers for taking care of myself.

I've been doing fairly well since. My leg is mostly better while my arm remains sore and my scrape (which not only starts on the inside of my arm, but curves around toward the back) looks to take some time to heal. I am eternally grateful to have gotten out like I did and to have someone as kind, helpful, and opportune as that lady fulfill such an unfortunate role.

In other news, I got the Special Edition (or Extended Unrated, depending on what side of the box you read) of Enemy of the State to stave off boredom. Now, I won't go too much into how I thought of it, I'll only say that there's enough extra footage to almost garner an "Extended" in it's title, but I'd argue that "Special Edition" fits it better.

What's the difference, you ask? So glad you have done so...Here are the myriad titles given to DVDs.

DVD has become a fantastic medium for the Directors Cut. Now, the Directors Cut (referred to as "DC' from here on out) is an old form. As many of you may or may not know, the director does not get the final say in what form his film goes out to theaters. There are executives in the company funding the film that also get a say in what does and does not make it into the final cut. Some reasons are financial; they want the movie shorter so they can show it more often, some reasons my be personal or opinion oriented, but what you see in the theater sometimes isn't what the director intended you to see. Hence, the idea of a "Directors Cut:" the preferred edit of the film put together by the director without any outside influence. If directors are famous or lucky or what have you, it used to be that such cuts would be cleaned and released to the public, either in theaters or direct to video. With the advent of the medium of DVD, such cuts are easier to put together and release, and thus have they proliferated.

The DC is usually characterized by inclusions of small moments, entire scenes, and even whole plot points put back into the film, sometimes altering huge portions of the story in favor of the directors vision. The most recent example of a drastic and welcome DC was Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven 4-disc set. In this case, there were many rumors beforehand that the original cut of the movie had been mercilessly edited by the studio executives and left a shell of it's former self. While this theatrical release did only middling well, word got out of the longer, better cut existing and perhaps being released. Sure enough, some time later the DC was released to large critical acclaim, though the lack of a proper theater run for it left its supporters mostly in the internet crowd. The Kingdom of Heaven DC is a near completely different movie, with large sub-plots included, numerous scenes that fully flesh out characters and more. From an opinionated standpoint, I would argue that this DC rivals even that of Scott's acclaimed Gladiator in terms of how good a film it is, but that is for you to decide on your own.

Speaking of Gladiator, that brings me to the form of an Extended Edition. An extended cut can have all the same attributes as a DC, but the noticeable difference is that it may or may not be approved by the director. As Ridley Scott mentions in his introduction to the Extended Edition of Gladiator:

"This is not the directors cut, the directors cut is the length that went out in theaters, the one that you've already seen, probably. This has a lot of scenes in it that were removed during the editing process and might be worth seeing."

An Extended cut with the approval of the director is usually a fun foray out, a gift to fans and movie-philes or an experiment, but not necessarily what the director intended. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is also a fine example of the Extended Edition. Peter Jackson and crew were perfectly fine with the theatrical cuts of each of the movies, but they put together extended cuts to see their other ideas breathe, and to allow people to see more of what they had up their sleeves.

An Extended cut without the directors approval usually is no different, though sometimes a cut can be released that is "extended" in that it has more scenes and such, but said cut was never put together by the original director. Who exactly does the cut isn't usually public knowledge, but if a director divorces him or herself from the cut, their name is removed from the directing credit and sometimes is replaced with "Alan Smithee," and anonymous penname that serves as a placeholder and flag that the director had nothing to do it. The recent release of the 1983 Dune in extended form is an example of this.

Then, at the bottom of the heap, we have the Unrated Edition. These cuts have very little changed in them, save for more blood, gore, violence, nudity, sexual situations and/or explicit language than the original cut. That's it. The only point is to re-introduce a movie that got heavily censored by the MPAA, usually to meet requirements for a certain rating. I have mixed feelings about Unrated editions, as they are usually released seemingly to garner more money for the studio than to show something different. However, there are good reasons to release Unrated editions. The only example I can think of was when the gory, unforgiving Alien and Predator series combined to produce the rather tame (in comparison) AVP. The unrated cut was more or less a boon to the gorehounds who loved the previous incarnations of the franchises.

There's also the weasel-y Extended Unrated Edition, which at base should be a combination of the last two types. More often than not, the studios (or whoever puts them together) include juuuuust enough extra scenes or footage to earn an "extended" on it's title, which makes the rather simple "unrated" version seem better by a longer name. There can be good extended, unrated cuts, and the recent release of Enemy of the State satisfies my definition of both titles.

Finally, there's the Special Edition, which may or may not have an altered cut, but is sure to include more extras than the standard release. Like the previously mentioned, the extras can be paltry or plentiful, depending on the decisions and resources of the studio putting it out.

So, there you have it. I hope this clears up any confusion you may have the next time you go out to buy a DVD.

I'll be at the SF Ren Faire this weekend, and I'm greatly looking forward to it and spending time with my Anja.

Enough, More Later.
- James