A while back, Melissa and I watched the movie “Marie Antoinette“, starring Kirsten Dunst as the eponymous role.

I thought the movie was pretty good — Melissa was a bit more critical, but she disapproves of most things. ( )

For those of you completely unaware of historical references, the movie was about the brief period of time before the French Revolution began. In a nutshell, the French Revolution occurred because the wealthy ruling class was so far divided (both financially and socially) from the servant / lower class that a Peasant uprising occurred. Other factors believed to be involved as causes were:

• the exorbitant national debt of france (partly due to Louis XV & XVI’s warmongering / overseas military activities)
• the “conspicuous consumption of the noble class…despite the financial burden of the populace”
• “High unemployment and bread prices”
• The ineptitude of the leader, Louis XVI, to deal with any of these (and many other) problems

[Source]

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Categories: Musings, Rants
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We’ve all seen the headlines “James Pauley and the attack of the killer mutant cyborg sheep: Part IV sweeps the box office with the biggest opening day of all time!”

Apparently, we, the simple-minded public, are supposed to be wowed and awed (and cajoled, via bandwagon propaganda) into seeing the movie. One thing I’ve noticed though: It seems everytime a new blockbuster movie comes out, it’s always “the biggest opening day of all time!” and only by a little bit. It got me thinking “I wonder what the biggest opening day was, of the top 10 opening days, when you adjust them all for inflation?”

Inflation for those of you that don’t know, is the creeping death of our almighty dollar. Every year, on average, our dollars are worth 3.2% than the year before. (This means, among other things, that the minimum wage which was stuck at $5.25 for several years, is actually only worth about $3 / hr when you adjust for inflation). What inflation also does, however, is skew price comparisons. We’ve all heard our grandparents say “I can’t believe how expensive ____ is! When I was a boy, I only paid a nickel for it!” More often than not, the price has only changed by a penny or two (AFTER ADJUSTMENT), and sometimes, such as in the case of eggs or milk, it’s actually CHEAPER (adjusted) than it was when Grandpa was a wee lad.

Back to movies.

So, here’s the data I’m working with, pulled from BoxOfficeMojo:

Calculating the CPI:

Ok, this is where a VERY SMALL amount of math comes in. It requires consulting a table, setting up a very simple proportion, and doing some multiplication. A calculator helps, but isn’t totally necessary. (Or, and you are going to LOVE me for this, you can use the BLS’s Inflation Calculator!!!)

First, we need to get our CPI numbers. CPI is an acronym for “Consumer Price Index”. It’s calculated, and maintained, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). There’s lots of information on that page, but the real meat-and-bones of it is in the US City Average, All Urban Consumers table. Just trust me on that.

Ok, to use this table: Along the lefthandside, down in a column, is the years, stretching from as far back as 1913 (your grandpa / great-grandpa’s time) to March 07. (April will be up soon, they’re generally a month behind.) The columns to the right of the year column are individual months, all twelve of them, followed by an annual average. Doing individual month comparisons are generally more accurate than annual average. So to find the CPI for a given month, we find the row containing the year we want, and then find the column corresponding to the month we want, and Bingo! There it is. The CPI for that month.

For your own trivia, I’ll walk you through one of the top 10 listed. (Bear in mind, since we don’t have May 07’s CPI, this won’t be QUITE as accurate as it could be, but it should be pretty close!) Let’s do #10: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Return of the King came out in December 2003. The CPI for that month was 184.3. The most recent CPI is March 2007, which is 205.352. So now we create a ratio of those two dates to get their CPI factor. (205.352 / 184.3 = 1.114053). Now, we multiply that factor times the raw (nominal) price from the past. (1.114053 x 34,450,834 = $38,380,060.97). So the Return of the King’s opening day ticket sales, in today’s dollars, is 4 million dollars more! That’s substantial!

Since I don’t expect you to do all the calculations, I’ll do them all here. (Since we don’t have May’s CPI - I’m estimating it at 208.72. The months previous have both increased approximately 1.7 each month. So two more months = +3.4)

Just because I’m a glut for punishment, here’s that table again, sorted:

Only three big differences, rank-wise. But then again, all of those movies are all from the past decade. I’ll leave you with this last comparison, for “all-time highest-grossing-movies”. Movieweb (with their annoying verizon ads) lists the top 1000 grossing movies of all time. At number 1 is “Titanic” (12/1997, $600,788,000), number 2 is “Star Wars IV: A New Hope” (5/1977, $460,988,000), and number 74 is “Gone with the Wind” ($198,655,000, 12/1939).

Doing the same thing again:

I rest my case.

Categories: Geekery, Movies & the IMDB 250
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We’ve all heard the tale. It’s been spread memetically for years: I’ve seen it referenced on television, heard it buzz around the college campus, read it in publications. If you start Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album at the third roar of the MGM Lion on Wizard of Oz, you will witness amazing synchronicity.

I decided to put this to the test myself.

Melissa kind of rolled her eyes at me when I told her what I wanted to do. We’re both pretty skeptical about things, but I thought it would be fun to try. Besides, in the worst case scenario, I waste 43 minutes of my life by listening to “Dark Side of the Moon” which is HARDLY a waste by my standards. I found “The Wizard of Oz” at the library yesterday while picking up some movies and returning some books.

My expectations at this point were pretty minimal. Rationally, I know that the band has repeatedly denied intending for any synchronicity. I know that this reeks an awful lot like a “cold read” that alleged psychics use (the kind where most of the magic happens because they expect you to draw the necessary conclusions).

At the same time, I secretly hoped to witness some kind of bizarre and totally unlikely scenario where the two perfectly synched up. I envisioned the album becoming as transparent as an actual soundtrack.

Before you read my own reactions, why don’t you watch it yourself on google video. It’s 43 minutes long and is pre-synched for you so all you need to do is watch.

The Reality

Ok, first off, I have to say that I had forgotten how good “Dark Side of the Moon” is. The experience was definitely worth getting to just kick back and listen to Roger Waters, David Gilmour et al jam out.

Was there any synchronicity? Lyrically, there were a few coincidences. “Balancing on a wave” is sung right as Dorothy is balancing on the pig-pen fence. “Black….and Blue…” is sung just as the Wicked Witch of the West appears in munchkin land. “Lunatic is on the grass” is sung just as the Scarecrow starts dancing on the yellowbrick road. I think I heard something about “magic spell” during the scene with “The Marvel” fortuneteller in the beginning scenes.

Musically, there were a lot more surprising synchronicities. Many of the songs began right at transitional moments. By far, these coincidences were a lot more piquing than the lyrical ones. My rational mind immediately dismissed it as simply being a mere coincidence; A product of artistic timing (perhaps mixed with a little golden ratio proportioning). Nevertheless, it was pretty cool. When Dorothy opens the door to munchkin land (in TECHNICOLOR), the song “Money” begins. Some of the overall tones change at dramatic moments. You have to really see it to see what I mean.

The Verdict

There’s no true synchronicity. You would probably have just as much luck playing any other psychadelic album while watching this movie. Try watching this movie while listening to “Shine on You Crazy Diamonds” or “The Wall”. The psychadelic aspect is important because that genre tends to do a lot more blending of the songs. (You could conceivably do it with an electronic album, I suppose. We used to do that with the Fantasia movies).

Bottom line, it’s a cold-reading phenomena. We WANT to see the coincidences and the connections. It’s our natural tendency towards making the world make sense. With this particular music-movie combo, there were far more moments where the movie and music WEREN’T totally synched up (like during guitar solos, for example, and we all know how long those are!) than there were parts that DID synch. The lyrical coincidences are bogus. You could probably play a 2-Pac or The White Stripes album and find similar coincidences.

The Dark side of Oz is said to be far more significant than it really is, which in my experience is pretty typical of stoners.

Even so, you should check it out and see for yourself. Let me know your thoughts. Like I said before, spending 43 minutes of your time to listen to this Pink Floyd album is never a waste of time.

Categories: Geekery, Humor
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