Round-Table: Spielberg

Two ideas have been wandering around in my head for a while. One was Spielberg-based. Favorite movie. Worst movie. Progression. The other idea was a series of "roundtable" conversation dealing with various topics. The topic and info in the post. Conversation in the comments. That's the best implementation I've got of a roundtable in blog-form (will take better suggestions).

So why not smang them together?!

For our first Roundtable, Steven Spielberg. *applause* I was going to keep the topic directed at the question of "What is Spielberg's Worst Movie?", but let's open that up a bit. Our primary question will still remain the subject of his worst movie. Once we've tackled that, let's venture into relating questions. Favorite movie? Liked/disliked characters? Etc. Any thought, questions, statements related to the topic (Spielberg), throw 'em in there.

Info:

Rotten Tomatoes seems to be the movie rating standard, so you can find a list of Spielberg's work here. Be careful of his credit listings. There's no filter, so don't mistake Spielberg for the director of "The Legend of Zorro".

Imdb provides a more manageable list of director duties here minus the ratings.

Note: Spielberg is not the [official] director of 1982's Poltergeist and 1985's The Goonies, though often confused as such. Unofficially, Spielberg was heavily involved in both movies. For The Goonies, Spielberg worked very close with Richard Donner and the cast. His influence was there, but Donner was not usurped. Things were not so smooth for Poltergeist. Though Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Tobe Hooper is officially credited as director, many involved with the movie cite Spielberg as the real director. You can read that tidbit here.

RE: Rise of the Apes!

Reading your thoughts, Ryan and Katy, I've been trying to figure out my expectant followup comment. Obviously from my FB message, I liked Rise of the Apes. A lot. I would even go so far as to call it my "Movie of the Year" thus far (previously was Rango). As a Planet of the Apes series fan, thanks to many replays on 90’s TBS, my favorite one was always "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes". If not known, Rise of the Apes is a remake/reimagining of the 1972 movie that had Roddy McDowall as Caesar. I say this because the few reviews I’ve read reference the original Heston movie and liken Rise as a reboot/prequel to it.

Conquest hasn't aged very well. There's some things in the movie that are damn hokey (training apes to get accustomed to serving tables in a disco club setting completely with strobe lights and funky music), but the under/over-tones can save it for a patient viewer. Racism. Slavery. Torture. When the revolution comes, it is swift and violent (gore, if any, is understated). Many humans are beaten to death with blunt weapons. Many apes guned down. It all ends with Caesar giving a hated-filled speech in front of his fellow apes and their sole prisoner, the head of "Ape Management". Caesar declares a new world. A better world. "And that day is upon you NOW!" With that, the apes beat their prisoner to death with the butt of their rifles. I should note here there's an issue with that ending, but that's for another time.

Overall, Rise of the Apes gave me close to what I wanted from a remake of Conquest. More time was devoted to Caesar. We saw his "fall" as he realized he was not a man but an ape. Worse that he had the knowledge of such. Finally, we get a movie that, first, proves that a special effects character can be a proper lead in a live-action movie (as oppose to Bay's Transformers movies not actually being Transformers movies) and, second, that much can be done by actions with little or no words and still be effective, if not much more.

For both of your disappointments in Rise, I don't wish to go down the point/counter-point road. Though I really enjoyed the movie, I don't see you both as completely wrong, nor I completely right.

The thing that stuck out to me about the mom chimp wasn't that the science dudes were unaware of the pregnancy. As far as I know, chimps don’t physically show much if at all. Though that would leave blood testing up in the air and I would assume that would show a pregnancy, if their tests displayed the proper indicators. What I noticed afterwards was that the mom defended her child.....by leaving him. But the mother, no matter how smart she may have gotten, was still a wild chimp in an unfamiliar/human environment. The overprotective rage could have blinded her and pushed her further away from her cage/baby with every human she encountered.

Likewise, I took no notice of the riot police order for safeties off. It was my understanding that, in an organized armed unit, it is the commanding officer who gives the order to go “live”, even more so in a fragile situation like the one on the Golden Gate Bridge with a mix of friendlies and targets. As the apes took the bridge, the people were spilt between those who remained in their cars (city side) and those already out and running from the apes in towards the redwoods. With humans on the battlefield and heading towards armed police, I would think it mandatory for the unit to have safeties on till people were cleared and the “go live” order given.

I found the film to be very violent. The actions of the apes toward each other and, later, humans were realistic to what I’ve seen of primates on Animal Planet and youtube. The attacks were unsettling on a primal level. That in mind, it was obvious that there was a lack in realism as far as the consequences of these ape attacks. Caesar attacked the pilot and bit his finger. Tommy and I assumed he bit the finger clean off, as chimps are prone to do. Nope, the guy later had his finger in a splint. In the case of the mauling/beatings (the pilot, the not-Draco ape worker), both were stopped fairly quickly. The lack of consequence could be explained away by Caesar holding both himself and the other apes back. Caesar seems to understand the importance of life and the severity of taking it away. As much as he hated Draco, his death was accidental. Caesar wanted to repay Draco for the fire hose attack, but wasn’t aware of the electrocution hazard that Draco’s cattle prod. Of course that changed with the death of Buck the Gorilla (damn humans!) causing Caesar to purposely allow the death of Money-Hungry Corp Head.

I do strongly agree that I was expecting, and would have liked to see, more violent results, be it straight up gore or implied. These are apes. Apes are fucking insane. They tear off dicks and wear them as [white] hats. Same for the police, minus the dick hats (hopefully). But I can see and understand the possible reasons why the powers-that-be distanced the movie from this (PETA, lady disfigured by chimp, likely adapted sequel storyline from Battle for the Planet of the Apes, PG-13 =mo’money, yo!).

Turns out Super 8 is my annual “Movie I’ve been interested in seeing for a while but forgot to actually go watch it”. I’m getting better as last year had too many winners.

As for the characters, writing, and such, my guess is that we are approaching the film from different directions. We all like bad movies, but I assume you both are probably much more selective of movies watched overall while I am a bit more open (I don’t do anal, sorry). My point that maybe I’m a bit more…uhh…..aware (though there’s a better word out there) of just how low movies can go in the writing/characters department. Best recent example: Transformers 3. Tommy still enjoyed it, but admits its problems. Also, Sucker Punch. Not even Tommy can say shit for that movie other than the chicks were hot (which is true). As you can see, Tommy is my measurement of how bad a movie is. I can’t trust my own feelings. That would be biased, right? Anyway, that’s my guess. That I see it as above standard fare while you guys see it as below and made worse due to the rule of cool. I would agree that all human characters are simple, but I wouldn’t personally call them terrible (except for the cliché drunk teenagers looking for fun in a damn ape sanctuary!). Each one served their purpose in the story. I thought the James Franco/John Lithgow dynamic quite reflective of my own relationship with my Alzheimer’s-afflicted granddad.

The GF’s singular line about some things not meant to be changed was a bit shallow, I’ll agree, but, eh, I’ve had worse. “Kiss me, Neo”.

Sorry you guys didn’t like it, especially since I “highly recommended” it. But, hey, seeing as how the movie has already almost made back its budget, we’re likely for a sequel! You guys ready for Rise of the Apes 2: Rise Harder?

Oh and Katy, you know your awareness of ape balls, or lack thereof, is gonna be a thing, right?

Movie Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

As you know, Stirling, I was excited about this movie. I thought that a summer blockbuster about biotechnology would be a lot of fun. Katy was skeptical. And it turns out that she was right to be. Here's why:

It was sooo unrealistic, even allowing for the silliness of the premise. So I'm supposed to believe that at a laboratory in which they test gene therapies on chimpanzees, a laboratory that ostensibly employs experts on chimp physiology, nobody noticed that one of the new arrivals was pregnant? Sorry, no. I'm supposed to believe that a phalanx of riot police, with their rifles at the ready, has to be reminded by their superior to take the safeties off? Nope. I'm supposed to believe that an animal trainer who is beaten for a considerable period of time by a several mature chimpanzees is going to be in any condition to explain what happened the next morning? Again, no. He'd have been lucky to have survived that attack at all; at a minimum, his injuries would have been traumatic. But that brings us to the next problem.

I wanted it to be sort of gory and scary, but the violence never rose beyond the level of the cartoonish. This was a movie that just couldn't deal maturely with the violence at its core. There were several instances in this movie in which the victim of chimp-violence ought to have been, by all rights, a bloody mess. (If a chimp starts wailing on you like that, you ought to thank your lucky stars if your most notable injury derives from a bite to your finger). At least in part, the movie's squeamishness about treating this violence seriously has to be related to its depiction of the apes as unambiguous white-hats. If you start showing what really happens when people get attacked by chimpanzees, the audience might lose its warm, fuzzy feelings for our heroes. Me though, I like an ambiguous hero. I come to the cinema in hopes of experiencing complicated emotions. I prefer to be confronted by the ramifications of the real excesses of the side I'm rooting for. Rise of the Planet of the Apes lacks the moral backbone to even confront its own premise.

Another contributing factor to the film's squeamishness must have been its PG-13 rating. I need to learn not to go see PG-13 films, no matter how interesting they look like they might be. Rarely, something like Super 8 comes along, but most of the time, you just get action movies that privilege visual effects over versimilitude and emotional resonance.

Also related to my complaint of cartoonishess, Katy notes that in the course of the film, although we see many chimpanzees from many angles, standing, sitting, running, whatever, we never see any ape genitals. This, if you've ever seen a chimpanzee, is a LARGE omission. See right. This isn't really a complaint. But once you notice what the movie is NOT showing you, you kind of have to laugh about it.

The characters, the writing, and (maybe) the acting were all terrible. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is inhabited by the dullest, flattest characters that I've seen in a movie in a long time. Let's play a game where we try to sum up all of the main human characters in one word each. This is like shooting fish in a barrel:

• Will: self-absorbed
• Will's girlfriend: pretty
• Will's dad: old
• Will's boss: bastard
• Will's neighbor: jerk
• Lab chimp expert: bearded
• Chimp shelter owner: amoral
• Chimp shelter handler no. 1: sadist
• Chimp shelter handler no. 2: stutters

There. That's everything you need to know about the human characters in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and you didn't even have to spend $7.50 and waste two hours of your life. The writing is just as bad. I think that the acting was pretty lousy too, but it was hard to tell. I mean, what were they supposed to do with those lines? "Will, you have to learn that there are some things that aren't meant to be changed." Seriously, that's the line that's supposed to fire up the protagonist to to re-examine his life's work? It's the turning point of the film! The big moment when Will realizes something about himself upon finally, irrevocably losing his father. And that's the best the screenwriter could do? It's so derivative! It's like the mad scientist version of "You just don't get it, do you?" If you're writing a screenplay, and you see this line in it, write harder! Say something interesting—anything interesting—instead! Ugh, my head hurts. I have to go soon.

In light of all this, it's almost irritating how good a job the director and Andy Serkis do in bringing the character of Caesar to life in mostly wordless scenes. Caesar is a compelling character. If this was the best script they could come up with, they should have striven harder for wordlessness.

Nightmares and Dreamscapes

Man. Amazing, or annoying really, just how much a nightmare can set you back. Make you feel as if you haven't progressed at all these past 3 months. Feel like a child.

Then left wide awake at 4:30 am. Wanting to go back to sleep, but can't. Trying to empty your mind, but can't.

Can't we go back to the asskicking Transformers/Kyndal dream?!

You Know What's Bullshit? - Coming to An Exercise Class and Not Exercising

There's a list of things about teaching/leading an exercise class that grabs my goat. Right up there at the very top is people coming to class and NOT exercising.

What the hell?! We're not kids forced to go to math class. We're adults. The class is optional. Everyone is there because, supposedly, everyone wants to be there.But then, every once in a while, I'll get someone who comes, pulls up a yoga mat, and does nothing. [Bull] squat!

Several months back, a woman of 30-something years came to class. She's friends with 2 of my regulars. While I conducted a special 1 hour 30 minute Yoga X class, she sat on her mat. Texting. Talking to her friends in class. Annoyed the shit out of me. So I directed my wit and tongue at her several times throughout the workout. It was a light tone. Humorous. People laughed. No feelings were hurt but my point was made. Why come then sit and do nothing?

This happened again today with one of my regulars, a cute, yet married, girl. She wasn't "in the mood" yet she came to class. While others lunged, did squats, and boxed the air, she sat on her mat. Other times she laid down. All times doing nothing. I again made light of the situation. At one point, I announced that we were going to lunge "that way" past [Name Withheld] then we'd turn around and lunge back past [Name Withheld] again. "This is a two [Name Withheld] exercise!" Creating a new unit of measurement, a [Name Withheld].

Worse, both women want to lose weight. But they don't put in the work to do so. At least one does come to class. The other seems to expend too much time and energy in trying to find ways to lose weight by doing as little as possible. Read: Irony.

P90X - How It's Done

Is it really that bad? No, not really.


When hearing of P90X, it's usually about just how tough it is. Impossible. Many people start, No one finishes. Really, though, it's just a workout. But it can be tough. It certainly can be impossible, if you approach it at face value and don't listen to the instructions or yourself. I've personally experienced how boneheaded people can be with this workout. They didn't listen to the instructions. They didn't listen to me. And they didn't listen to their body. They finished the routine. It was only a 15 minute ab [ripper] workout. But they killed themselves, have yet to return (over a month back), and I'd bet they aren't working out anywhere else.


So I thought I'd share some "tips" for tackling P90X. Advice that should transform this mythical monster into something a bit more...manageable.


Do every routine, even the ones you hate. For me, the worst workouts are the ones I've never done before. I don't know what's coming. I'm willing to jump over the obstacles, but I need to know what they are. There's nothing harder than not knowing what's up next or when it'll end. So you take the "new" away from the workout. Do each one as it turns up in the rotation. Make each one old hat. "Yeah, it sucks, but I've done it like 8 times already. So what's another one." I hate plyo. Well, just dislike, really. But I do it. I get it over with. And then I see that fucker again next week.


Do what you can. I can't do every exercise in P90X. I can't do as many reps as they do in P90X. I do what I can. If the people on the tape are doing 30 reps of something (and they do) and you can only do 4, 8, or 10 or whatever. It's ok. They are pushing themselves. You're pushing yourself. It doesn't matter the number as long as that number is bringing you to the limit [for that set].


Be a 60 minute man. Most routines are an hour long. Tailor yourself to last the entire workout. You may can do 30 push ups. Once. Maybe even twice. But you've still got arms, back, legs, whatever. Dominating the first 10 minutes of a workout doesn't mean squat if you can't bring it the following 50 minutes. These are one hour workouts. You finish the hour workout. If that only means 4 reps here. 10 reps there. Doesn't matter. In the end, you'll have done more reps than the guy who goes balls to the wall and burns out after 10 minutes. Pace yourself. Probably the most important piece of advice and the biggest error most people make.


Food. Water is important during the workout. I take in water after every 6 exercises, when given a water break, and/or when needed. You're sweating. Losing water. Replace it. Usually you'll hear to take small sips. Not to gulp. If that works for you, fine. Me, personally, I gulp that noise down. 3 or 4 gulps even. I don't get sick and puke so I'm not worried about taking in too much water at once. Afterwards, eat something. Anything. Usually being away from home, I'll having some type of bar with me. Likely a Fiber One knock off. Your body is looking for energy after a hard workout. Give it some.


Simple to do at home. Equipment is minimal. A chair. A pull up bar that you stick in a doorway. Some hand weights. I have 30 & 25 lb dumbbells, 20 lb kettlebells, and 8 & 6 lb handled medicine balls. Can I lift more than then the heaviest weight I've got? Yeah. But these do more than the trick when you've got a lot of reps to get through.


Shit, I had more. But I seem to have forgotten.


P90X isn't impossible. I wouldn't even call it "hard". You can get through it. Take each exercise one at a time. Do the reps. Take a breath. Move on to the next. It's tough, but manageable.

RE: Running

To improve running, I'd focus on the legs (obviously) and core.

For legs,

1. Calf strength is very important and the primary force propelling you forward when running. Calf raises are the go-to exercise. You can do them simply on the floor or from the edge of an elevated platform (like stairs) for added range of motion. Hold weight for increased difficulty. Note: I would not recommend holding weights while doing calf raises off the edge of something.




2. Tip toe exercises are another good way to focus on the calves. Tip toe/Sneaky lunges are great. You stand on your toes and deep lunge forward (back leg straight, front leg's knee over the ankle, & try to step forward as far as you can). Hold the tip toe lunge for a few seconds. Then bring your back leg forward back to starting position and repeat. Find yourself a fairly large area to do this. I workout in a large room and lunge from once side to the other. Ideally, you could do this on your walking path. Just set a distance for yourself. Doing the lunges while remaining on your toes the entire time may be hard at first, depending on your balance and leg strength, but gets easier with practise as most things tend to do. Another good one is Gap Jump or Monster Truck Tires. Just pretend there's large tires on the ground and you're jumping from and landing on your toes from the center of each imaginary tire.
   




3. Squats are good. Aside from the normal ones, there's Goblet Squats where you hold a weight in your hand while squatting. Deep/Floor Touch Squats (no vid?!) where the feet are pointed slightly outward and you squat down as low as you can and/or touch the floor with hands then squat back up. Two one-legged squat variations with [Super] Skater Squats and Dead lift Squat. Oh and then there's the Wall Squat. If you're feeling froggy, there's One Leg Wall Squat.
   




4. Lunges can be done with body weight or added weights. Besides tip toe, there's three way lunges.

Core, I would suggest Wide leg Situps (you can cross legs indian style to make harder) & Pulse Ups (don't rock the legs back and forth as much as the guy in the vid does, should mostly be an up&down movement).

I recommend watching these videos and grabbing various exercises from it. Ab Ripper X Part 1 and Part 2. Legs and Back. Plyometrics (sorry, this is the best vid I could find of it).

I'll post about P90X sometime this weekend.

Running

Stirling,

I'm glad you brought up health. That's actually a pretty fortuitous topic for me right now, because I've just started a new workout regimen this past month. And actually, I've been wanting to write about it, but always had something else I'd rather focus on. Your question brings my workout to the front of my writing queue.

My weight was around 170, which could potentially be a pretty healthy weight for me if it was lean mass, but mostly it wasn't. So in mid-June I took up walking, with a view to intersperse some running as my heart, lungs, and legs got stronger. There's a five-mile bike/running path that runs from a park just across the highway in front of my apartment, along the river, all the way to downtown. I started out just walking the two miles north, and turning around and walking the two miles back, which takes me about an hour. It's about 100 degrees out there, and humid, so it isn't exactly a picnic. I've added a little more running over the ensuing weeks. Now I walk the first two miles, turn around and walk back a mile, then run three-quarters of a mile, and walk the last quarter-mile back as a cool-down. I do this every weekday, weather-permitting, but I've only been out one time this week; the skies have been threatening rain, though they haven't delivered.

I've dropped five pounds, which is nice. I find that I have to drink a lot more water during the days. But I also find that I'm less hungry after a long cardio workout than I was before.

A few observations about my workouts:

1. I never would have guessed just how much of an effect the sun and wind would have on my body while working out. My first two miles are northward—generally into the sun and with my back to the wind. When I was first starting out, I would be completely beat at the end of the first two miles (I've gotten better since then). But within a few minutes of turning around so that I face away from the sun and into the wind, I feel better in almost every way. My muscles loosen up. I sweat less. Before I added any running to my workout, I typically felt more exhausted at the end of two miles than I did at the end of four!
2. The psychological impact that running is having on my life is at least as important to me as the physical. I hadn't really expected that. But I find that being alone in the sweltering, unfriendly elements for an hour, getting sweaty, not talking to anybody, not thinking about much of anything, doing something for myself—something that matters, really, not at all to anyone else in the world but me—is hugely liberating. And at the end, when I've run the distance I told myself I would, there's not only the sense of accomplishment, which can be pretty easily described, but there's also the endorphine high, which feels good, but not in any way that I could put into words. It's become something I look forward to when I'm at work, specifically as a way to disconnect from work.
3. So far, running doesn't seem to have made my legs any stronger. This came as a surprise to me, though probably not to you, given your background, Stirling. In the beginning, I had some muscle aches in my calves, but those have gone away pretty much entirely. Since then, any discomfort has been knee- or ankle-related, in which case I take it easy for a few days and start back up when they feel solid again. But since my calves and thighs weren't aching, I figured they must be stronger than they used to be. So a few nights ago, when the weather was being uncooperative, I decided to test this out by doing some squats. And the squats were just as difficult as they've always been! Furthermore, in the morning, my thighs ached like a motherfucker! The remedy for this, of course, at least short-term, was more running, which loosened up those muscles again. My heart and lungs are almost certainly as strong and healthy as they've been in years, but it's clear that if I'm going to strengthen my legs, I'm going to have to focus on resistance training as well.

I'm certain that you could have told me all of this and more if I'd just seen fit to ask you. Anything else I ought to think about for the kinds of workout I'm engaging in?

I'm interested to hear about p90x, which is something I keep hearing about, but about which I know literally nothing. Looking forward to getting an explanation.

Welcome Back! How's Your Health?

Risen from the dead like a zombie that creeps Dennis Hopper the fuck out! And we'll start things real easy-like with a simple question, How's your health? What are you doing? What do you feel you should be doing? Goals? Wants? Whatev!

Me, I've spent the last two years going up and down the weight scale. 2009/Tampa saw me drop to 180 lbs thanks to wrestling in a hot warehouse. Post-Tampa, I gained weight up to 215 lbs. That was a mixture of weight-lifting and eating whatever the hell I wanted. September 2010, I then transitioned to a mostly yoga regimen which saw me drop from 215 back down to 180. I think maybe I was eating a little better (not that I ever really ate "bad"). So hey! Yoga does work. The biggest benefit from yoga has been flexibility getting into the poses and strength in holding them. I can bend forward, keep straight legs, and palm the floor. Being a guy, pretty damn impressive. Feels really great. I can move around and quickly switch between positions with ease. I use to hate stretching, but I have come to terms with it. Even enjoy it a little bit now that I can see the results.

This is what I love about having a job that deals with exercise. The thought of working out 3 or 4 hours a day is much easier and manageable when it's your job and you get paid to do it. I lead them through a workout but it's mine as well. I am my best student.

Currently, I do find myself working out 4 hours on any given day as I've thrown P90X routines into my schedule. On afternoons, I have an hour gap between my two classes. Usually, I devoted that time to power naps on a really crappy-looking yet oh-so-comfortable sofa in a room across the hall. Thanks to events with Kyndal, I found myself needing to do something. To keep my mind busy. What happened was sad and I was tired of feeling sad about it. Tired of thinking about it. So I "obtained" P90X dvds and did them between classes. I usually have a guy (50's, great shape, weight lifter, ex-HS wrestler/football player, ex-cop now engineer) from my later class join me as well.

Each routine is an hour or less. Includes warm up, main exercises, and cool down. Workouts include Chest & Back, Shoulder & Arms, Legs & Back, Kenpo (punck, kick, HA!), Plyo (jumping), Yoga, Cardio, Stretch, Chest-Shoulders-Triceps, and Back & Biceps.

I'll try to save my thoughts on P90X for another post, but, honestly, it's not that bad. If you keep certain rules in mind and use your head while working through them. And it does work. There are results. Not the extreme 3 month results that advertisements would suggest. Though I'm not sticking to the P90X nutrition plan, but following my own rules. Proper portion sizes. Lean meats (turkey, grilled chicken). Try to avoid beef and fried crap. Increase protein intake.

With the P90X & yoga mix, I'm stronger. Leaner. Up to 190 lbs. More flexible. Doing more push ups, pull ups, curls, presses, lunges, etc. So what are you guys doing? Give me the details. Tell me how it's going. How you feel. Goals.

To Bing or Not To Bing?

Microsoft recently launched what it apparently hopes will be a Google-slaying new search engine called Bing. The guys in marketing were apparently quite deliberate in choosing a name for their new search engine that could be conscripted into service as a verb, a la "googling." You can see this in an open letter to users, in which the Bing Team enthuses, "We sincerely hope that the next time you need to make an important decision, you'll Bing and decide."

I spot three problems with this potential verb. First, written in its presumed participial and past tense forms ("binging" and "binged," respectively) "to bing" is indistinguishable from "to binge." That's not the sort of ambiguity that I'd generally like to invite.

Secondly, the nearest English verb prototypes for "to bing" are probably "to bring," "to fling," "to ring," and "to sing," all of which are irregular verbs. You don't form the past tense of any of these verbs by adding -ed. No, you turn them into "brought," "flung," "rang," and "sang." Try those endings out on "to bing": "bought," "bung," "bang." And now see how you like substituting those into the sentence, "Last month, I googled Sonia Sotomayor maybe fifteen different times."

(Imagining "bung" entering the vocabulary as a past tense verb puts an inexplicably resilient smile on my face, I have to admit.)

Lastly, the participial form "binging," is just an unpleasant mouthful to spit out. It rhymes with itself in a cloying, ugly, nasalized guttural way. Those double -ng's are just too much damn work. We put up with them in "bringing," etc., because those are part of our native vocabulary, but no marketing manager is going to get me to use as demonstrably foul-sounding a word as "binging" just because it was the best he could come up with.

The Bing people were right to note that the verb form "to google" gives Google a word of mouth marketing advantage. The word makes for a pleasant mouthfeel. But on the Internet, these verbs spring up all the time, even when they aren't quite so easy and obvious, as long as the service is actually good for something; "to facebook," "to imdb," and even "to wikipedia," are all verbs I've encountered in real life. So I'm partially annoyed that Microsoft ever decided to make the verbiness of its search engine's name central to its ad campaign. Build a better product, and your users will take care of the linguistic bits for you. But what sends me over the edge is that, having decided that it coveted Google's verbiness, Microsoft couldn't come up with a name any less problematic than "Bing" in terms of precision, morphology, and phonology.