A few years ago, I had to do a phone interview with two Israelis, living in Jerusalem. Because of the time difference, and the ridiculous hoop-jumping one had to do in our office to make an international call, I opted to call them from home, first thing in the morning, and expense the bill later. Two calls to Israel, 70 minutes total = $240 on my phone bill.

I should have just passed the pain along to my ungrateful employer, but the sum was so insulting I called to see if it could be negotiated. It could. For signing up retroactively for an international calling plan, and understanding that it could be cancelled in five more days, they gave me the international-plan price: $17.

I took Econ 101 AND 102, but when prices can vary that much, it makes me realize I wasn’t cut out for life in the business world (or running a hospital). Today I got another lesson: The 4-pin to 6-pin Firewire cord.

At the Apple store: $30.
At Best Buy: $40 (I should note this specimen was 17 feet long).
Via the internet, a 3-foot version: $4.

Ah, well. If you want to talk about ridiculous prices, yesterday I paid more than $4 for a sugar-free triple-shot vanilla latte at Starbucks Fourbucks. I had a caffeine-deprivation headache at the time, however, which made it more like buying aspirin. The headache went away while my stylist painted blondeness into my hair.

“If only I were a man, I could enjoy having your boobs two inches from my cheek,” I said, all at once realizing that said boobs were significantly larger than they were the last time I got my hair cut. “Why, you’re pregnant.” Six months, in fact, which means I didn’t notice last time, when she was 4.5 months along. Well, no one ever said I was a good trained observer. Besides, haircuts are the only time I can bury my nose, guilt-free, in In Style magazine; I’m not really looking around to see who’s packing a fetus under their apron.

The highlights came out well. Decrepitude is held at bay for another few weeks. I asked the stylist if she’d consider a few platinum streaks in front a good idea, and she said that not only was her answer no, “if you asked, I wouldn’t do them.” Well, excuse me. See how you feel in 20 more years when your gutters guy, the one with the freshly healed bullet wound and the Chris Farley physique, says you remind him of someone famous. Vintage Brigitte Bardot? Mid-period Susan Sarandon? Bette Midler, for cryin’ out loud?

“Carol Burnett,” he said. I wanted to dye my whole head green.

Ah, well. Enough of my mid-century angst. On to the bloggage!

“My chicken is in political exile” — only in Ann Arbor.

My birthday appears 647,751 digits into pi. How about you?

Via David Mills, three short web “prequels” for “The Wire,” a few scraps as we count the days until the best show EVAR starts its final season. He likes When Bunk Met McNulty, and it’s OK, but my heart belongs to Young Omar. Also: Young Proposition Joe.

Assholes With Guns, chapter 7 million: Seven-year-old girl shot six times trying to protect her mother.and it’s still going on. Via Roy.

To the gym. Have a swell day, all.

I’ve had some difficulty finding my feet this morning, and now I gots some stuff to do. In the meantime, someone asked what I meant by painterly composition in “No Country for Old Men.” How about this?

Kind of conventional, I know, and criminally cropped from its widescreen aspect ration, but you get the idea. (I was working from the online trailer.)

Off to have my hair highlighted, pick up antibiotics for the dog and harass foot-draggers by e-mail. Oh, and MichaelJ, you absolutely MUST intrude again. I don’t know what we’d do without you.

Saw “No Country for Old Men” this weekend. I don’t think I can discuss much without the tiresome “spoiler alert,” but I’ll try. If you’ve seen it, or aren’t bothered by spoilers (which aren’t as spoiler-y as usual — this movie is pretty high-concept in the plot department), go to Roy’s place, and check out his original post, as well as the comments, and the boot to Glenn Kenny’s.

I’m more easily pleased. I loved the thing pretty much beginning to end, although I understand the objection to the last 25 percent, as well as the ending, which was greeted by a few stunned Huhs in the multiplex where we saw it. Didn’t bother me. This is a film made to be watched again and again, after which the ending will become more coherent, I think. Besides, even if you take the position that the denouement is a disaster, who the hell cares? Jack Nicholson was the weakest thing about “The Departed,” but I’ll watch at least a few minutes of it every kind it comes around on cable, because Leonardo DiCaprio is fantastic. If you can’t be thrilled by all that’s great about this movie, from the painterly composition of every shot to the note-perfect performances, well, you should probably go ahead and buy a ticket to “I am Legend.”

A few words about that composition: The Coen brothers are famous for storyboarding their movies from first shot to last. When you see their attention to detail — the bloodstained quarter in Javier Bardem’s palm, a dog’s leap for the throat that sends you an inch off your seat — you can appreciate movies in a whole new way.

As for Bardem, I think Roy nails it:

And if Javier Bardem had not made his monster Karloff-scale believable we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. This is the greatest kind of acting — the kind that suggests its own backstory. I can see him as a hollow-eyed, beaten boy, silently absorbing evil and taking all his lessons from it, growing into a creature that cannot be stopped or swayed, but still must have his little games to prove, in the face of uncomprehending fear (his or theirs?), that he has been right all along. Bardem’s performance is eternal in a movie that could have been.

Since we were in a mood for grim violence, but mostly because it was snowing like “Dr. Zhivago,” we opted for the verboten La Shish, our local Middle Eastern chain, for dinner before the show. Bad reputation, that place, but I justified our visit thusly:

1) The profit is probably all going to the IRS these days, not Hezbollah; and
2) It was snowing really, really hard, and it was either that or McDonald’s.

And even though the whole chain is in danger of folding like a cheap tent, the food was…heavenly. The best pita bread I’ve had in my whole damn life. A vegetable melange that tasted fresh, light, and perfectly spicy. Hummus to die for. The bread came with some sort of garlic paste I wanted to dab behind my ears, it was so good. The whole east side of Detroit is pretty slim pickins, restaurant-wise, but after one bite my only regret was that I didn’t support Hezbollah’s booster sooner. Anyone who can cook like that can’t be all bad.

Just a bit of bloggage today, via Metafilter: An 1898 letter to professional baseball players, outlining the new bad-language policy. Worth a read, if only for the chuckles. Go fuck yourself! So Al Swerengen.