Now Playing: The Fifth Element

The year 1997 was an interesting one for me at the movies. Normally I don't go out to the theater to see one movie several times mainly due to rising costs. As much as I love film, it can be a damn expensive hobby if all you do is sit in the theater which is one reason among many why I and film lovers the world over treat DVD like pure heroin. But 1997 was a little different for me. The year started off with the re-release of the Star Wars trilogy re-mastered and altered by head Jedi George Lucas. I could count on one hand the number of times I'd seen those in the theater so you better believe I watched those a lot. Then in the spring Gross Point Blank came out which I absolutely fell in love with.

But in May, that insane French director Luc Besson let his imagination run completely wild with The Fifth Element and I've watched it religiously ever since. I've been meaning to pick it up on DVD for years but when someone releases enough different versions that I lose track then no matter how much I like the flick I'll say "screw it." Such was the case with this gem, but after finally getting some software installed that lets me watch DVDs on my computer I figured it was high time to pick up the Ultimate Edition.

Which is what I'm watching right now, and it remains gloriously fun. Watching this is like Besson opened a portal straight into his imagination and said, "Come on in." But in French.

Good lord is this movie fun, from the the wild costume designs by Jean-Paul Gaultier to the extremely French soundtrack by frequent Besson collaborator Eric Serra, to Bruce Willis obviously having the time of his life as cab driver/ex-military man Korbin Dallas. He's fortunately backed up by a cast that's having as much fun as he is most notably the great Ian Holm. Holm is flat-out hilarious as extremely nervous priest Vito Cornelius who's known his destiny was coming for 300 years but is terrified of what it means he'll have to do.

And what other movie would have the cojones to cast Tiny Lister as the President of basically everything and Gary Oldman as an art dealer/weapons dealer who based his performance on Ross Perot. Bright colors are everywhere as is eclectic performances, both of which come together in the character of Ruby Rod who proved to be the make-or-break character. Personally I found him hilarious, but he can grate on the nerves if you don't think Chris Tucker is funny.

I do wish the tons of great ideas were followed up on. The ZF-1, for instance, is introduced as the end all-be all of weapons but it shows up only twice. The uber-villain also falls by the wayside because even though it's described as evil incarnate it comes across as a giant fireball with a deep voice.

I do love the site gags like the cigarettes that are 70 percent filter, the mugger, the obvious Star Wars gag(s), and the wickedly cool Diva. There is just too much fun overall to pass this movie up if you haven't seen it. As such, it's going to wind up on loop in my PC everytime I need some creative inspiration.

Now Playing: Elizabethtown

My favorite movie of Cameron Crowe's is Almost Famous. Period, bar none, end of discussion. I guess the reason behind that, other than the note-perfect soundtrack which was a character of its own, was because it felt real, honest, and spoke from the heart about remembering days long passed. Oddly enough, I think he went for the same thing with Elizabethtown and completely missed the mark.

Before I get into what I thought went wrong, let me start by saying the first 20 minutes are so hilariously spot on perfect that there was no way I could keep quiet. Drew Baylor (grimly played by Orlando Bloom) is an engineer at a shoe company who's first solo project has just gone up in flames. Actually, that's putting it kindly. Imagine a nuke going off and that would be more accurate.

Drew walks in knowing full well that his shoe (called the Spasmodica) tanked the company, but he puts his game face on even when taken to see the boss, Phil. Phil is described prior to Baylor actually seeing him and the visuals combined with Bloom's narration had me in hysterics. That was amplified when Phil actually speaks because Alec Baldwin absolutely kills in his five minute role. The way he takes Drew through their facilities talking to him about cutting this program or that program truly nails what it feels like to fail absolutely at anything and Baldwin is brilliant. He's making a career out of appearing briefly only to walk away with the entire show.

Once Drew gets home he plots to kill himself. Being an engineer he can't just take a knife to his wrists though and the contraction he comes up with, that also fails, is truly funny. It's at that point he gets the call that changes the rest of the movie: His dad Mitch died while visiting family in Elizabethtown and his mom and sister want him to go there and retrieve the body. Up to this point, Crowe has me completely interested in Drew's issues but once he hops on that plane we're introduced to the make-or-break character of the entire film: Claire.

As played by Kirsten Dunst, Claire is just as transitory in nature as her job as a flight attendant is. But every time she speaks it feels like Crowe was going for another Penny Lane-type free spirit and here he goes overboard. Personally, I like the heck out of Dunst as an actor but here it feels like she's really trying way, way too hard. I couldn't figure out whether Claire is desperate to connect to someone or desperate to keep everyone at arm's length, and its this contradictory nature that wound up pissing me off about her character.

Once Drew reaches Elizabethtown, Crowe knocks another homerun by absolutely nailing the South and how the large families interact. I have well over 100 cousins and relatives the majority of whom I've met only once or twice in my life. But when those people get together then everyone no matter how remote is treated like immediate family and it was a hoot watching Drew navigate through a sea of people he barely remembers from his childhood.

But then the film periodically crashes and burns by jumping back to Drew's homestead where his mother (Susan Sarandon) is channeling her grief into learning new skills. Every single time we go back there the film comes to a dead stop. But then Drew and Claire talk on the phone all night and the movie gets back on track, right down to introducing a random couple called Chuck & Cindy who are staying in the same hotel as Drew and are getting married in a few days. Guffaws aplenty follow Chuck & Cindy whenever they show up, so the film adds another charm to it.

By the end though, Elizabethtown just kind of wanders around looking to find its way which would be a better metaphor for what Drew feels if it actually, you know, found something. The final road trip sequence is wonderful by itself but feels like it belongs in another movie. Elizabethtown I had high hopes for, and to be fair I enjoyed watching it while sitting with My Fair Lady primarily because she was emotionally freaking out whenever someone on screen talked about Mitch dying and I'd laugh, or give voice to Mitch.

But I'm warped that way.

Pwned by the Missus

So My Fair Lady and I are getting into bed tonight to read for a while prior to going to sleep. She turns off the overhead light and suddenly the room on my half mind you goes dark. Not pitch black, but a flashlight would certainly help.

"It'd be helpful to have a lamp on my side of the room, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah, we really need to get you one of those someday," she replies.

"Wait... I'm having a thought," I say.

"Don't strain your one, tiny little brain cell. I kinda like you, and don't want you to break something and stop breathing," is the curt reply.

That's two. She's allowed three in a lifetime so I'm looking at my watch right now because as soon as that third one strikes (which estimates say should be around Thursday) then all hell is going to break loose in Casa de Skim.

Translation: I'll be mocked again and sulk about it on the internet.

Further Wonders of Teh Interwebs

You know, I look at how frequently I blog these days (especially considering how I blatantly stated at the beginning of the year about being more frequent) and I just shake my head. Frustrating to say the least that I'm not writing as much as I want to, but I have hope.

In other news, I'd like to bring out yet another example of how the wonders of Teh Interwebs will never cease. Check out this wartime film that uses AOL-er speak to simulate a war film.

Stuff like this rules.

Back to the Blogging...

God I hope so at least. I seem to be having trouble with my focus issue I discussed earlier this year in terms of covering DVDs, movies, and so forth more consistently. The upshot is that I've recently attained a new focus. The downside is said focus has been towards my two jobs, my day job at a chaos-driven production company and my night job at Gaming Trend. Between the two I'd choose the second one to work full-time for, but until the site is in a position to actually pay for contributors I'll be working for cheap.

But I wanted to give a shout-out to all the lonely hearts out there on Valentine's Day and say that you're really missing out on having that special someone if you don't have a person in your life like My Fair Lady. She is unabashedly sentimental and comes complete with a perfect memory, which makes keeping up with her something of a challenge. Sometimes though she comes through and stuns the hell out of me with a gift from the heart that makes me kick myself because I didn't even remember that I wanted it.

Her present to me tonight was the box set of Back to the Future which she originally bought for me when it came out in 2002, unbeknownst to me. Funny enough, about a day after she bought it I found out about the infamous framing issue and mentioned that I was pissed that I'd have to wait until Universal got off their butt and fixed it. In hindsight, I really should have read her face better but if I'm not actively thinking about something or looking for it, then odds are I won't see it.

Ever.

So we're in Best Buy the other day and I casually mention that they had finally fixed the framing issue, then I put it out of my mind. That set was always on my list of things I'd wanted to own forever but never thought of when I was in the store. Lo and behold she surprises me with it tonight so I wanted to tell her from as close to a mountain top as I can get that I unequivocally love her and am crazy about her.

Have a happy Valentine's Day to one and all.

Lost and Found... Part Deux

According to this article at CNN, an entire Lost World has been found that's roughly the size of Rhode Island. Which means it's the equivalent of your backyard plus your neighbor's backyard. Plenty of new frogs, flora, and birds were discovered and I for one welcome our new-found Frog Overlords.

The only way this story would be cooler is if this was the second expedition sent in to retrieve the first one which disappeared under "mysterious circumstances." It's also comforting to see that Mother Nature has hidden a few gems away from prying eyes. Since she doth have a wicked sense of humor we might see one of those new found frogs to be carnivorous with a taste for wayward scientists. Which means we Americans, being the nature lovers of the world, would then firebomb the area just to be safe. Which would just anger the Frog Overlords and soon world-wide mayhem would ensue. Then again I might be overthinking this a little bit.

It's been a weird morning thus far so bear with me.

Lost and Found...

CNN has a fascinating story about what happens when someone misplaces an archeologic find and someone else finds it in the basement... 60 years later.

The 210 million-year-old fossil had sat in storage at the museum for nearly 60 years and was found only by accident, the paleontologists said.

The animal is interesting because it closely resembles a completely unrelated dinosaur called an ostrich dinosaur that lived 80 million years later, they report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British science journal.

The entire story is right here.

Mojave Phone Booth.... THE MOVIE!!!

There are a lot of funny stories about random things in the world at this link, but my money goes to the following as the funniest:

The Mojave Phone Booth was a lone telephone booth in the Mojave National Preserve which attracted an online following in 1997, due to its unusual location. The booth was 15 miles from the nearest interstate highway, and miles from any buildings.

Fans called the booth attempting to get a reply, and a few took trips to the booth to answer, often camping out at the site. The story inspired the creation of a motion picture, Mojave Phone Booth, due for release in 2006.

Think about that for a second. Someone somewhere thought that a phone booth literally out in the middle of absolute nowhere would make a good subject for a film. I honestly want to know who came up with this idea, and punch him/her in the face for stealing an idea like that before I had it.

Conversations with My Fair Lady

If you want to stop laughing at what I'm doing then it would be appreciated kthxbye. I swear to God and all that is Holy(tm) please stop your laughing it is driving me batty and I cannot focus!!!

It helps to not spit on the writer too. BTW - imagine all this said in a Scottish accent and you'll know what it's like in my head right now.

and that ear won't see any use for, you know, EVER.

Damn misspellings

Okay then. kthxbye.

love you too. damn two, to, too.

keep getting confused. no. I meant it. you already kissed and snogged the writer, WHAT MORE DO YOU BLOODY WANT WOMAN!>?!?!?!?!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

/blogger explodes

stop it. now. go take your pill. in fact, take three. still leery here.

then go make me a sundae womam. to the kitchen with thee!! And take your spitting ways with you!!!!!

still here

nope

still not missing you. still missing that sundae though.

when the bloody hell have I ever shortchanged myself on a sundae?

--------------------

The above was the transcript of My Fair Lady and I just now. Feel free to imagine what was said on her part at the approriate times.

Oprah Pwns Back

Some people have heard and expressed interest in the non-fiction memoir A Million Little Pieces by author James Frey, though I am not one of them. Mainly because a book about the horrors of drug addiction and incarceration isn't something I'm interested in. A good thing as it turns out because The Smoking Gun recently published a multi-page expose that basically pointed out that the author was a liar.

As it turns out, he originally shopped it around as fiction but switched to non-fiction because he and the publisher felt it would sell better as a memoir. Oprah then picked it up, read it, gave it to everyone at Harpo and forced them to read it, then had the author on and praised him and the book to high heaven.

All of which bit her in the butt in a big way once the truth came out. To her credit, Oprah kicked his ass on live tv and for that alone I have to give her credit. I also don't know why I'm writing about The Big O on my blog, but hey I was thinking about it and figured I'd write up something this afternoon.

Oh My God....

I've now found the greatest exploitation film title ever. Virgins From Hell. But it gets better. Here's the description:

A chaste all-girl biker gang vows vengeance on the drug lord that did them wrong in this kinky Asian exploitation film. The gang goes after Mr. Tiger for selling drugs to kids, but instead, he gains the upper hand and holds the biker chicks captive, using them as guinea pigs in his aphrodisiac experiments conducted with the help of his sadistic lesbian associate. But Mr. Tiger soon learns he's no match for the virginal vigilantes.

Imagine me laughing my head off and you'll know what's happening in my office right now. I'm also adding this to my Netflix queue because any movie with a title like that and hailing from 1987 must be genius. Throw in god-awful dubbing, and I've found a flick that must be seen as soon as it hits on Jan. 31.

The Calm Before/After the Storm

It is amazing to me what can be done when management drives the train straight into a wall, but insists on plowing forward anyway. The short version is pulling the kind of days I've had for the last two weeks has resulted in severe burnout both physically and mentally. It is not a good sign when you walk into the office before 8 a.m. Monday morning and the only thing you're looking forward to is possibly getting off before 5 p.m. on Friday.

A whole lot can happen in the meantime, and it's to the point now where I flat don't care. Ah well, at least I can point to five posts on the DeLorean story and count that as a victory, even if #5 was mine.

In the mean time, I'm content that my day at the office was, by comparison to the last two weeks, calm. The recent storm that blew through managed to drive everyone crazy with so many impending deadlines compounded by the install of a server system for our video editors that flat doesn't work. It also took management until today to realize that it didn't work, and to pull the plug on it and get something in that would. The joy on everyone's faces at hearing the good news immediately vanished when we all realized that those impending deadlines are only getting closer and our technology, in short, sucks.

It also doesn't help that we have enough work for 15 full time editors, but only have five (I'm also counting our two production coordinators as one-half an editor). Our lead editor is also soon to depart these shores for the sunny climes of hurricane-friendly Miami, which leaves a big damn void of talent in the office. "Interesting" is one way of describing the environment there, with "absolute anarchy" being a better way.

And the best part is that this massive show that is going on in a few weeks hasn't been cut yet. Oh no, that starts tomorrow with the final pieces of the puzzle not being dropped in until next weekend at the earliest. The spot airs the week after that.

Oh what fun it is to ride this one horse careening-out-of-control sleigh.

The plus side is I have a new outlook on life and my own projects this year. I find it frankly stunning that someone like me who was once obsessed with dreary now actually has a hopeful outlook on the future. Burning through almost 20 pages of script this past weekend helped keep my sanity better than I could have imagined. But the real key has been My Fair Lady's unwavering support and love. Without her I honestly would not be the guy I've become in the last few years and I don't think I've ever said thank you publicly.

Thank you, My Fair Lady, for everything you do and for being the wonderous woman you are.

In less romantic news, I've found a space sim everyone simply has to play. It's called Space Rangers 2 and it's utterly brilliant. The downside is that it will install the infamous Starforce protection software on your machine, but I've not had a lick of difficulty or system instability with it. If you can get past that, there is a dazzling turn-based game here that recalls the space sims of yesteryear brilliantly. I'm not that far into it, but this game is monstrously huge and terrifically fun to play. I'll write up more later when I get further into it.

As far as movies and TV go, I just finished The Shield season 2 and Vic Mackey owns my weak ass. I've heard people complain that seasons two and three weren't as solid as the first, but I disagree. While the first season was full throttle fury and energy start to finish, season two actually did what a second season should - it built on the existing characters and relationships while furthering the story of dirty cops walking the line between good and evil.

As outstanding as the second season was, I was floored by the final shot of Mackey and the Strike Team looking at the results of their ill-gotten gains. What should have been a joyous moment for them and the viewer was instantly turned heart-wrenching by the looks of shame on their faces. They knew that they could no longer look themselves in the mirrors and call themselves solid cops, and it made for a riveting finish to a stellar season. The only thing that knocks it down a notch is the focus on Julian being gay. We see it time and again that he's constantly fighting against being gay, going so far as to join a sexual rehabilitation group in his church.

I'm sorry, but who cares? He's a great cop, a stand-up individual to boot, but whenever his "temptation" shows up in the form of Thomas the show grinds to a screeching halt. I'm talking dead stop here. I want to see where they go with it considering how they left his character at the end of season two, but his arc is royally boring.

Right now I have Godzilla: Final Wars courtesy of Netflix and I'm dying to check it out. That may have to wait until tomorrow though, but as a long-time Gojira fan I'm aching to crank up the sound and listen to that roar. Watching him bitchslap the Godzilla-In-Name-Only from the Roland Emmerich remake is the type of bonus that comes along only so often in a man's lifetime. Expect a full report once I've seen Tokyo smashed for the upmteenth time.

Doc Brown Reads This Site!

CDS readers are apparently more varied than I gave credit to. Somehow my DeLorean post the other day was noticed by CDS reader Mark Shields who was kind enough to send over a link to his website. Which I'm going to blatantly pimp out right here because clicking that link will take you to pictures of his car.

Mark, if you're ever in town again then I'd love to get a closer look at that beauty. Its good to know that Mr. Fusion is helping keep America clean.

The Ultimate Showdown for Ultimate Destiny

Click this to see your geekiest childhood fantasy come true - every geek hero/villain you can think of, except Bruce Campbell, fighting it out to the death in Flash animation. All to an insanely catchy tune. Brilliant is how best to describe this.

For All You Gamers Out There...

... a video that will make you laugh.

In shame, I might add, for all those times when you just had to beat that level or hit that save point. High comedy is found within.

What the Hell is a Giga-Watt?!?!

Yesterday I was on my way home for lunch when I saw it. On the streets of Dallas, TX, I saw it.

THE DeLorean. If you have to ask why "the" is in bold, then you are not a child of the 1980's. The short version is a guy who left GM by the last name of DeLorean started building his own line of cars, one of which was used by the makers of a little film trilogy called Back to the Future.

Someone in Dallas has either the original or a replica, complete with vents and wires hanging off the back of it, and me wantsss it. There is literally no way in hell that I wouldn't get that thing on the freeway and crank it up to 88 mph within 10 seconds of owning it.

Young Hooked by NFL

In a surprise to absolutely no one, Vince Young has declared for the NFL Draft thus bypassing his senior year at UT.

"I thank God for the opportunity to be in this position," Young said at a news conference. "Hard work has paid off a whole lot."

If only he weren't such a pompous ass about his abilities, I might care. Then I remember that he went to UT, which is one of the most overblown institutions of higher learning around. Then I also remember that he basically won the Rose Bowl single-handedly, which means Texas may have quite the fall from grace next season. Good luck to Young on his career, which will hopefully include learning how to take a hit from a 250-lbs linebacker looking to make a name for himself as the guy who killed Vince Young.

And Now, a Flaming Mouse

CNN sometimes posts funny stories like this one about a man bested by a mouse he tried to burn to death. This story strikes home for those of us who have fought off vermin before.

My First Guitar Hero Post

No, I don't have what has been hailed as one of the greatest games ever. Thanks to Bill Harris of Dubious Quality fame for pointing out what is hands-down one of the best televised reports on gaming to ever hit your television. Were I living in Sacramento, I would so be tuned into this station all the time just to catch fun like what's going on here. Check it out, laugh it up, and rock on.

My curiosity on this game has gone through the roof of late, but the slightly higher price tag isn't what's holding me back. It's the fact that my game and DVD backlogs are so huge that I absolutely have to whittle those down before surrendering to the rock gods.

My Christmas Present for '06

There is nothing that I want more right this second than this prototype 103" plasma TV from Matsushita. It doesn't matter that I'd need a forklift everytime I needed to move it, and that the walls of my house would in no way support the weight.

That sucker would rule when combined with a surround sound setup. And it would rule me for the rest of my life as I tried to pay off the $130,000 price tag. Such is the price for glorious bragging rights, but it remains a small price to pay for a new toy of that size.

Bunny-Hopping for Your Art

What better way to kick off the New Year than with an epic struggle of a man against the forces of nature? I'd love to read about that too, but in the meantime here is the story of an idiot who wrapped his legs in chains for a self-portrait only to lose the key, all out in the middle of the desert.

And 2006 rolls in

I didn't think it had been this long since I actually wrote anything but apparently time has a funny way of slipping out from under me. The Christmas holidays were particularly nice to me and My Fair Lady, and New Year's was equally enjoyable. We went to Lubbock for several days to spend Christmas with her family, then had a nice dinner at home before driving around looking at Christmas lights to celebrate New Year's.

It is now time to discuss the 2006 promises that I intend to keep. Here's hoping I actually do so. :)

1) Write more. This is hands-down the goal I am most focused on for this coming year. Last year I got back into writing more with my stories, ideas, scripts, and blogs, but this year will be the year I focus on them and turn them into more than a few pages of scrambled notes. My Fair Lady gave me a year's subscription to Writer's Digest for Christmas and that combined with her gift of the PC game The Movies and my parents' giving me a top of the line screenwriting program means I have all the motiviation and tools in the world to finally shut up and do it. Consider it done.

So what exactly does that mean, you might ask?

It means more of me here, and on my machine at home. I'm currently wrapping up the holidays at the house, and addicted to Ratchet: Deadlocked, but my plan for cranking out writing projects is simple. It's all a matter of focus, which is something I've lacked from birth. I figure that I may as well learn it now that I'm staring down 29. Once again I have to point at my gaming addiction as a turning point in my life last year.

In 2004, I actually completed seven games. Probably played close to 100, but actually finished seven. In 2005 I completed 25 games total, with one of those being completed twice. The difference was focus. I would start up one game and play through the entire thing before I even touched another one. That way my extensive backlog slowly, but surely, was whittled down.

I'll confess to being on the verge of exploding the backlog again, but I have a different view on both gaming and writing this year. My focus is on one thing at a time now, and thus far the results have been amazing. Since my attention span is roughly that of a gnat, anything shiny tends to draw my attention away from what I was working on. With my writing projects, I'll write on something for a while before another idea pops into my head and then I follow that for a while. The way to end the cycle and actually get something completed is to set, and adhere to, deadlines.

Trust me when I say this scriptwriting program is nine kinds of kick-ass. It goes on my machine tonight. A few other things have to be done first before I will really focus on it, but you better believe that this weekend my focus is on writing. Gaming and movie watching will occur as well, but a 48-page script I'm working on goes back onto the front burner this weekend. My due date for that is by my birthday which is towards the end of next month.

I intend to hit it.

I also intend to crank out more movie and TV show thoughts here. I know I said as much last year, but this year is again about the focus to complete things. It's high time I actually lived up to my own abilities and desires so here goes. Hopefully you guys will enjoy it as much as I do.

Movie Trailer Round-Up

Here are the latest trailers for your amusement:

The DaVinci Code.

This will be a license to print money when Sony releases it in May. Speculative history plus the Vatican all based on an easy-to-read page-turner means it couldn't have been more tailor-made for mass consumption if God Himself made it so. I have yet to read it, though My Fair Lady makes sure to remind me of that every other day. I'm debating not reading it between now and then (mainly out of spite) and seeing how the movie plays by itself. Its the same tact I'm using with the Harry Potter series, but that's also because I thought the first book sucked and saw no reason to devote myself to a series that didn't have the words "The Dark Tower" somewhere in the title. Once I finish the movies, I'll go back and read the books but not before.

It helps to view them as pure cinema versus an adaptation, because in the case of the later I'd be just like my friends - they enjoy it, but then spend 20 minutes complaining about what was cut and what should have been there. I don't think DaVinci is anywhere near as bulky as Harry Potter, so it should be easier to squeeze everything into a two hour flick. In theory, at least.

Poseidon.

The winning pick for "Who Cares?" for next summer. The original is a staple of 1970's disaster flicks, and rightly so, but what point does remaking it serve? Sure, it has an ultra cool wave, followed by the exact same ship-based destruction we've seen since the 1970's. Sure I'm a Kurt Russell devotee, but... why shell out for five minutes of entertainment and two hours of boring talk? Didn't I already see that with The Perfect Storm?

V For Vendetta.

This is the one for me come spring. Holy crap it looks like the Wachowski Bro(s). managed to knock this one out of the park. Early word is exceptional, but it has the same problem as From Hell did for me. Everything looks like it was filmed on a soundstage with sets out of the latest London-based play. I confess to ignorance on the architecture of the large cities having never been to England. The layout may well be as constricting as it looks in the trailer, but it still feels like the action and actors are all butting up against the walls and don't have room to move.

But I think I was a claustrophobe in a former life, so it could just be past memories resurfacing again. At some point I'll have to bring up the 15th Centrury Italian tailor memory - that one was a doozy.

Stop Dying You A-Holes!

Death comes for us all, as the saying goes, but if you live in this town, you better not die because... its illegal.

Right when you think you've heard everything, along comes a Brazillian mayor who wants to outlaw death.

Mayor Roberto Pereira da Silva's proposal to the Town Council asks residents to "take good care of your health in order not to die" and warns that "infractors will be held responsible for their acts."

The bill, which sets no penalty for passing away, is meant to protest a federal law that has barred a new or expanded cemetery in Biritiba Mirim, a town of 28,000 people 45 miles east of Sao Paulo.

"Of course the bill is laughable, unconstitutional, and will never be approved," said Gilson Soares de Campos, an aide to the mayor. "But can you think of a better marketing strategy?"

I can. How about not scaring the hell out of the tourists who fear fines should their number come up?

The Trap Is Set... and Sprung

Some time ago My Fair Lady and I discovered a possum running around our backyard. He shimmied up the fence and took off, so we didn't pay much more thought to it. A few weeks after that, I heard a noise in the ceiling and went up into the attic only to find Mr. Possum crawling along the floor boards and ducking into a crack in the wall that separates our attic from our neighbors (we live in adjoining town homes). Thus began extensive Googling to find out about animal traps, the conclusion of which was that the city of Dallas animal control sucks.

It takes forever to get through on their phone line, only you wind up getting another answering machine that directs you to call another number. Regardless of how close we live to another near-by city (about 80-ft), the city of Dallas had to come and pick up the animal should we catch it and corner it. Would they come out and trap the animal themselves?

Golly gee no, because if it got in then it has a way to get out. Help me, I do love government logic.

Foiled by bureaucracy, I began tracking down how much it would cost to trap the thing ourselves. It seemed to me that all I needed was a trap and some bait. I'd seen roadrunner cartoons, so if a coyote could pull it off just how hard could it be? Home Depot and Lowes both confirmed that they had traps in stock for around $30, which My Fair Lady was agog at.

"For that much, we could hire a hunting party with dogs to track the thing," she said.

"Honey, we already know where it is. Plus, our backyard is roughly the size of a picnic table and that many dogs won't have anywhere to go," I replied. "We only have the one tree, and that many dogs trying to mark the nearest territory all at the same time is liable to turn violent."

We put it out of mind when we didn't hear Mr. Possum for a while, but My Fair Lady's eagle eyes spotted it Sunday night in the backyard. I leapt to the rescue and charged outside only to see Mr. Possum flee my wrath in the direction of our house. Imagine my surprise when I followed him only to find a fairly large ground-level hole into the grandeur of Casa de Skim.

Fortunately, My Fair Lady knew someone at her law school that possessed one of these fabled "Wild Animal Traps" and when she brought it home I was surprised to find it looked like a wish mesh rectangle. There is a pressure plate towards the back of it, so my innate hunter skills kicked in and told me to set the food behind the plate, and then rig it so when the animal stepped on the plate the door would slam shut. Said skills also instructed me to leave a small trail of food from the hole in our house to the trap so Mr. Possum would easily find his way into harm's way.

The voices also told me to burn down the local Wal-Mart, but I figured they were just kidding.

The following morning felt like Christmas. Would we have a furry little present to unwrap, or not? The anticipation was killing me so I raced outside and found Mr. Possum a caged guest. When I arrive at the office, I again tracked down Animal Control and spoke with a rep there who assured me that they would be able to come pick the animal up in one to three days. Somehow that wound up translating to an hour and a half later when they knocked on our front door and My Fair Lady was caught unprepared. She called me later and told me the following:

"That possum was so cute. He just looks at you with these big dark eyes, and he's so sweet."

"Hon, that thing ate its way inside our house," I replied. "It might have grown big enough to try and eat us. Thankfully, we won't have to worry about it from now on."

She thought about that for a second before saying: "Do you think they'll just release it and it might find its way back?"

"Its not like we caged a golden retriever. It's a damn possum. The city is filled with them. If they release it south of here, then it might make its way over to my parents' house and bug them for a while. They already have enough of a possum problem, so what's one more?"

"That's not funny," she said.

"No it's not," I said. "What's funny is thinking about my dad running out in the backyard with his air rifle blasting everything that moves while the dog and cat just look at him like he's out of his mind. That's a mental image that's cracking me up."

Tipping the Scales

Here is a story that goes into detail on why the world's tallest building may in fact be nothing more than a big middle finger to Mother Nature.

Apparently, she's taken it personally.

Some genius thought that a 1,667ft. building weighing in at 700,000 tons would be perfectly placed right on top of a fault line. This puts in jeopardy the construction of Sky City 1000 in Japan, a proposed vertical city which I'm sure looks a lot like Coruscant in the architects' minds. I'm also sure that the notoriously shifty tectonic plates in the region won't take too kindly to bearing the stress of a city built on top of another city.

Man's achievements are only limited by his intelligence. But sometimes Mother Nature will step in and smack his butt hard just to remind him that he's a guest in Her house. We can, and should, always reach for the stars, but if you want to build a double-decker city on top of a fault line, that's just begging for Godzilla to wake up and tear ass through Asia. I can't wait to see how the CNN commentary explains that one.

The Ice Man Cometh

So an ice storm decided to blast Texas today. Before 2 p.m., I'd already been laughed at by a native Canadian, assured a paranoid Los Angeles transplant that sticking to the main streets would be his safest bet, and been assured that were I to call in sick tomorrow I would be dragged to work by my HR director since I live right down the street from the office.

Insert punchline here.

Texans tend to be an assertive folk on the roadways. We speed through 30 mph school zones with nary a care in the world, and regard speed limits more as suggestions. Law enforcement around rush hour tend to agree with the suggestion part as whenever they are on the freeways between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. week nights, its usually to help out with wrecks.

Now take an entire state of aggressive (and frequently paranoid) drivers and throw bad weather into the mix. Make it ice just for an added kick. It doesn't matter how long the ice is going to be on the ground. It's the End of the World™ just the same. None of us Dallas-natives know how to drive on ice because it so rarely hits us that the rest of the year we don't think about it. You have 365 days a year, and if two of them involve ice do you really worry about it the other 363?

Not hardly.

So a quarter inch of ice has found its way to our city streets and apartment complex roads, and will be burned off by noon tomorrow at the latest. Will that prevent mass chaos tomorrow morning during rush hour? Hell no. Personally, I'm banking on just that. Since El Jefe told us today that we don't have to be at the office until 9 a.m. tomorrow, I'm getting some popcorn in the morning for breakfast and watching the traffic gals work themselves into fits as they try to keep up with all hell breaking loose on the road ways.

I consider this the Olympics of traffic reporting. The only question is, who's going to bring home the gold?

Sloshing Water While Thinking = Not Smart

People who read funny things on the web tend to spit-take more often than other people. I don't know what the official spit-take to non-spit-take ratio is, but the odds of someone taking a drink only to read something funny and spew said drink on their keyboard increase for Fark or Bash.org readers.

I just spit a slight amount of water on my keyboard by accident as I was sloshing it around in my mouth, ostensibly to wash it out.

As if a little bit of water will wash away the taste left over from two chili-cheese hotdogs and a liter of Dr. Pepper. As it stands now, if I open my mouth again I'm just as likely to burn down my cube should I accidentally exhale.

Anyone have a breath mint or five?

Me Vs. The Germans Round 2

My Fair Lady is in the middle of her law school finals for the fall, and as such has spent an unhealthy amount of time cocooned in the library. Apparently, its not conducive to studying with me running around the house making explosion noices and talking to myself depending on whether I'm gaming or writing.

I'll leave you to guess which sounds go with which activity.

So it was on Sunday morning when she went out to her VW Passat to head to the library. My cell phone rings about 20 second after she walks out the front door.

Me: "Hello?"

MFL: "My car won't start."

Me: "What do you mean it won't start? Did it die somewhere?"

MFL: "Nope. It won't start and I'm out in the driveway. Help?"

So we both look at her car, and our official diagnosis of the problem was summed up thusly: "Huh. Want to take my car?"

Later that afternoon, I played with her car and determined the battery was dead. This was the same battery that's been in her car for the last six years, so the fact that it died was not surprising in and of itself. So when she came home about 9:30 p.m. that night, we decided that one day this week we would get up early and take her car in. Come Wednesday night, we still hadn't managed to take it in. But we figured it couldn't be that difficult to swap out the battery.

Apparently, German engineers are hella good at liberally bolting down everything they can find. Bolts must grow on trees over there because I've never seen so many on anything. I now think that there must be a "bolt tax" somewhere in the cost of German-made cars, because it can't be cheap to quickly grow them if they use one bolt tree per vehicle. I'll get to why I think this in a bit.

My Fair Lady throws her car into neutral and I push it out of the garage and line it up next to my Cherokee. I get the jumper cables out and she stops me cold. "Now are you sure you know what you're doing?" I calmly replied that while I may not be able to build a car blindfolded, I have jumped more than my fair share and do know what I'm doing. Then we got our first surprise.

Car batteries are different from regular batteries only in size. There is literally no other difference. So if the black cable goes on the black battery head and the red cable goes on the red battery head, then the connection is cleanly made. We then found that her Passat's battery was not so clearly labeled. The wires plugging into her battery, however, did have the red and black differenciation, but it took some convincing that this was the way to go. Once the cables were set, I turned my car on and waited a minute, then hers turned right on. So we decided to go buy a battery and swap hers out.

We get to Auto Zone and go through the process of buying a battery. Apparently, her father scared the crap out of her and her siblings regarding jumping cars and car batteries in general. In his day, if you jumped it wrong then the battery could explode all over you. The result of which is illustrated below:



When we got home with the new battery, we pop the VW's hood and look at the battery. It was wedged up near the front of the car almost to the point where the ability to hover in the air would have been helpful. As it was, we simply had to climb all over it to get the right angle because of, wait for it, how the thing was bolted in.

Every car battery has cables coming off of the positive and negative heads, so all you have to do is loosen these, take off whatever else the battery connects to, then pull it out and drop in the new one. But there are two things to consider when working on a foreign car:

1) The bolts and equipment were installed using a different measurement system so your tools won't exactly line up with what's installed. This will lead to an unhealthy amount of improvisation on your part as you struggle to use three tools to unscrew a bolt that one tool installed in the first place.

2) The parts you will unscrew will be small and can be easily lost if misplaced. Pre-determine where you will set the removed parts/bolts, and do not deviate from this.

After about half an hour of using almost every tool we own (which is quite a lot, for the record), My Fair Lady and I managed to unscrew every bolt and plate that held that battery in place. I then yanked it out, took the new one and dropped it in, then started reconnecting everything. When it was all set and ready to go, I casually hid around the corner while My Fair Lady started the car to see if it worked.

The good news is that everything went fine and her car runs better than before. The better news is that once again I have met the German enemy and defeated him thusly. The even better news is that we didn't have to pay some guy $100 in labor costs when I could do the same thing for a celebratory Frosty from Wendy's.

What can I say, I work cheap.

A Not-So-Brief History of Superman V

With the upcoming release of Superman Returns, people unfamiliar with the inner workings of Hollywood might wonder when this gem of an idea started. Those of us familiar or passingly familiar with the inner workings know that the film has been boiling for a looooooong time now.

If you want details of just how much of a cluster the project was until just a year or two ago, check out this forum post at OO. I knew a lot of the details of the project, but sweet Jesus even I was stunned at the wanton hubris of all involved. The story ends just before work on the final film began (circa 2003-4) so it gives the impression of being a cliffhanger. Rest assured that all of our fears will either come to fruition or be laid to rest next summer. From the teaser and early word from the set, I'm betting that Bryan Singer knocked it out of the park.

My favorite part was Justin Timberlake's response when he was offered the title role. I'll leave it for you to discover.

Be warned that if you plan to read it all, make sure to have at least an hour or so because it is about as lengthy and detailed a story as you'll find. It also should prove once and for all that no matter how high you climb in the world, there is always a group of people higher than you that is collectively dumberer than everyone else you've ever met.

Combined.

Now That's a Lot of LEGOs

CNN has posted this story about a man who stole $200,000 worth of LEGOs. I'm wondering what the tip-off was that he was the perpetrator, but the life-size LEGO X-Wing on his front lawn might have been a clue. I'm all in favor of playing with the over-priced bricks, but you know you might have too many when the cops take them all away using a dumptruck.

Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving

Happy holidays to everyone in the USA. You Canadian weirdos already had your Thanksgiving, so no turkey for you.

A special shout-out to employers everywhere who insisted their people be at work today even while they themselves are out of town on holiday. Not that we're bitter or anything. Of course, it gives me time to work through inventory which is something I've put off for two months because I needed a few hours when I wouldn't be interrupted to do it.

So at least there's that.

Ripped From the Headlines...

Two hilarious stories for the viewing public tonight. The first is this story about the dangers of aggressively flashing women and refusing to stop when The Man points a taser at you.

The second is a story I can no longer find the link to on CNN.com. It involved a drunken French woman (redundant, I know) trying to open a plane door to light a smoke. The catch is that the plane was in mid-flight. They always told us second-hand smoke would kill us...

Culinary Delights at the Supermarket

Damn you Blue Bell. Damn you for teasing me with Country Vanilla oh so many moons ago. My Fair Lady grew up eating home made vanilla ice cream, which is the furthest thing Blue Bell's vanilla flavors taste like. They have Homemade Vanilla and French Vanilla, yet a few months back we stumbled onto a new flavor called Country Vanilla. Deciding to take a risk, we picked it up and tasted it when we arrived at Casa De Skim.

The lights that went off in My Fair Lady's eyes as she tasted it were so bright it was as if the sun went supernova in the middle of her brain. It tasted... like honest to goodness homemade vanilla ice cream. Of course, we immediately ate throught it all and went back for more.

As is typical, it was no where to be found. Normally I prefer the richer French Vanilla flavor, but Country Vanilla simply ruled. Wherefore art thou, oh Country Vanilla? Why hast thou forsaken me and vicariously My Fair Lady?

On the flip side, we discovered that Black Forrest roast beef and honey ham is the best meat money can buy. Growing up, My Fair Lady's family would cut French Bread up and make sandwiches out of it using fresh deli meats and cheeses. A huge benefit was brought into our marriage when she introduced this concept to me, and we've been eating them ever since. Oh sure, we alternate different meals every few days just to add some variety to the menu. But we continually go back to roast beef sandwiches with fresh deli cheese, and it's tasty as can be. We always just went with the roast beef they had out, because how many times do you actually focus on the beef beyond whether it's fresh or two days old?

As it turns out, there is a world of difference between meat products. One time when I was shopping there, the clerk asked me if I wanted to try the primo roast beef. Figuring that sampling fresh meat is never a bad thing, I tried out it. I now refuse to touch roast beef that's not Black Forest Primo. Ditto their ham. Just thought I would share tonight.

So a New Console Hit Today...

And I honestly could not care less. Oh sure, the future is now and all that with the Microsoft Xbox 360. But despite claims that the games are super-stupendous-unbelievable gorgeous, I have yet to see an instance of that with the exception of Project Gotham Racing 3. This series has always pushed the envelope, and seems to be damn near photo-realistic with the screens I've seen. But since racing games do exactly zero for me, I don't care how pretty it is because I'll never play it. The release of Call of Duty 2 and Quake 4 for the Xbox 360 don't mean anything to me because I can play both on my PC, and they look the same from the screen-by-screen comparisons I've seen. Oh, and I have actually played Quake 4 on a 360 while I met with Activision in San Francisco back in September and it looked identical to the PC version.



This does not represent the huge graphical leap forward people claim it does. What it means is that the first generation of games on the new console can match existing top-of-the-line PC hardware, and that's good news for gamers. When the "real" games start hitting for the console, my imaginary target for that is next summer, then we'll start to see the envelope pushed on everything. There is not a second before that point in which I will consider buying the console, not one. Any and all new consoles are great for the early adapters who love to blow their money on high-tech gadgets and gizmos, and they are more than welcome to it.

As for me, I'll hold off until it's been at least 18 months since launch. This is what I do with consoles since I started paying for them myself, and at no point do I intend to change this in my life. It worked wonders for the PS2, and I picked up my Xbox for the sole reason of finally playing Halo, a game I'd followed for years prior to its console-only release. But I won't touch the 360 (or next year's PS3) until after it's been out for so long for one reason: The games.

No console can sell me without at least five games I have to play or I'll die. There were at least that many when I finally picked up my Xbox along with Halo, and I did the same with my PS2. Short of that, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo can all blow smoke as far up my backside as they want and I won't budge. If there are five drop-dead gorgeous absolute must-play titles by this time next year for the 360, then I might waver on my timeline. I do not doubt the console is powerful, quite the contrary. I expect phenomenal things from it in the future, but I don't think the developers have had enough time to really get up to speed on what the box can do. Just look at God of War and tell me you honestly thought the PS2 could pull that off, let alone do so this late in its life.

Now imagine the wonders we'll see two years from now on the 360 and three years from now on the PS3 (if it launches this time in 2006). This generation might push me and others further away from PC gaming if only because I've found the older I get, the less time I have for jacking with upgrades for my computer. I just don't care anymore, and maybe that's because of the day job. But I've built and rebuilt enough computers in my time to where I can do it blindfolded, and I hate doing it at home. My machine has a custom high-end video card that's now a year+ old, which means it's not close to what it used to be. To tell you how out of the loop I am on hardware I honestly don't know what the top card is anymore.

Even worse is I don't care. For $500, I can buy a top-of-the-line graphics card and a top-of-the-line sound card, or a new console and two games.

We'll eventually see where I wind up, and I know I will at least pick up a PS3 someday. Sony's exclusive titles have historically proven too tempting, and that's one thing Microsoft never sold me on this generation. Sure, games looked better on the box, but there were so many more options for the PS2 that it bordered on ridiculous. My number two system remains to be seen, but I will say this much. The 360 has a lot of promise and potential, but if it's not 100% backwards compatible in two years, then I'll keep my current box thank you. Halo 2 is the only game I own currently on Microsoft's BC list, and that game outright sucks. I might one day write up a column on why Halo 2 is one of the worst games I've ever played, but that'll have to wait until I'm in a bad enough mood. In the meantime, I'll watch people fight over 360's and laugh because the great games aren't even out yet and we all know it.

I'm just willing to wait for them to arrive first.

Superman Returns Teaser Trailer + Art

I'll admit it - I am not the comic book freak I once was. Pretty much my only two comic loves now are Batman and a distant second is Superman. Batman Begins pretty much rules the earth for me, and maybe someday I'll write up my thoughts on why. But for right now, we have the second coming of Superman, and it looks glorious. Check out this teaser:

Superman Returns teaser trailer.

Director Brian Singer has openly admitted to a fetishistic lust for Richard Donner's 1978 original, and at no point in the trailer is that not blatantly obvious. From the Marlon Brando voice-over to John Williams' legendary majestic score, this film looks set to galvanize superhero fans. With the one-two punch of Batman Begins and Superman Returns, Marvel better get on the ball because their butt is about to be kicked hard.

Kong Poster

Yup, another one tonight. I'm burning through my script and I've decided that whenever I hit a wall, I'll blog for a bit to keep the writing going.

Hey, we both benefit.

As for the poster, it's simple and beautiful. I'm curious about the film more and more, but I can't get over the fact that it's three frickin' hours about a damn big gorilla. The original 1933 version was only 100 minutes and is justifiably hailed as one of the all-time greatest films ever made. And all of us can feel free to ignore the 1970's version despite featuring The Dude versus Charles Grodin.

I know Peter Jackson did wonders with the Lord of the Rings saga, I really get that much. But three hours devoted to an ape?

V For Vendetta Poster

It kills me to have to shrink the posters I put up here, but I have yet to figure out how to use Image Shack (which lets you create clickable thumbnails) without inadvertantly linking to about a dozen porno sites.

On the flip side, that is one wicked cool poster for a story that pro-government politicians will likely be up in arms over. Not because it shows a future where the British government is totalitarian, but because the lead character is essentially a terrorist who works to bring said government to its knees. Frankly, I can't wait to see it, even if it looks like From Hell crossed with The Matrix.

All Hail Vin Diesel

Something I never thought I'd write, personally. Just thought about sharing the Vin Diesel Random Fact Generator with the three people that read this blog. A sample fact goes thusly:

Vin Diesel is credited with the phrase "revenge is a dish best served cold" when he physically manifested the idea of revenge into a dinner plate, froze it, and then beat his enemy to death with it.

Just keep hitting refresh and you're guaranteed at least ten more kinds of genius contributions like that.

Script Writing is Teh Hard

It's been so many years since I wrote a feature length screenplay that I'd honestly forgotten how. So it was that Mother Dearest handed me a slip of paper she'd clipped from the Dallas Morning News that told of a Hollywood screenwriter holding an extended education class at Richland College on the art of screen writing. So I go and sign up for it figuring it can't hurt. At the very least, it would kick my mind back into the right place for scripting.

Here's a quickie synopsis of how I am. I live, sleep, eat, breathe and love movies above all other things in this world, My Fair Lady excluded. Quentin Tarantino may love just about every grindhouse-kung-fu--exploitation flick ever made, with a particular emphasis on Italian crime cinema, but for me it's everything across the board. Name the flick and I've either seen it or heard about it, unless you truly reach into the realm of the obscure. Cinema is my second language, and has been since I was shot in the head with a movie as a small child. Like so many would-be film makers of my generation, I was bit hard by the movie making bug courtesy of George Lucas and Star Wars, and since then I go out of my way to watch anything and everything I can get my hands on.

In short, I know my stuff when it comes to film and television. But I've been out of the screen writing process for so long that the precise format had been lost to the sands of time, and I felt it was time to reclaim it.

Hence, I joined the class and damn if I haven't loved it. Tomorrow night is the final class and I'm currently on page 45 of my screenplay. It should be about double that, but circumstances at both work and home have taken their toll on my availability to crank out 15 pages per week as mandated by the professor.

The plus side is he still holds an informal discussion for would-be writers on Friday nights, so it's not like I'm without future options. He also loves my writing style, and recognizes that I know my stuff on what should be cut and what should be added to scripts. It's fun talking cinema with him, especially since he believes all films since 1970 are crap. While I won't argue that there are more than a few duds out there, I was half-tempted to throw Marnie back in his face.

Bonus points if you've seen that one.

But good Lord I'd forgotten how much I truly loved writing. Don't let the infrequent updates fool you - this blog has frequently kept me sane. Very shortly in fact, I'll be devoting a lot more time to it and to my personal writings, but saying more now would not be advisable. I'm also planning on talking more about my DVD collection and movies in general to just keep the creative juices flowing as much as possible. Who knows what might happen?

I may even finish a full screenplay this year as a sort of early Christmas present to myself.

Sony's Early Christmas Present to the Masses

By now, just about everyone has heard about the nifty little rootkit that the latest Sony CDs auto-install when you pop them into your PC. It manages to fit right into that nebulous legal area where law enforcement thinks its against the law, but has a tough damn time proving it.

Welcome to the wide world of rapidly changing technology, and law enforcement's efforts to stay only two years behind. The short version of what Sony CDs install is software that is both invicible to users and which cannot be removed. Oh, and anti-virus software won't pick it up. Should you manage to find it, forcibly removing it will more often than not result in a full system clustersnafu. My favorite part about this?

Sony not only did it as a means of copy protection (thus hurting people who had legally purchased the music CDs), but they didn't cop to the fact that they did it until after they were caught.

And now hackers have already released the first virus based on Sony's toolkit. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Sony decided to release a removal kit.

According to this story, the removal tool only opens a few more security holes than the inital rootkit did. Not to mention the fact that once the initial rootkit is uninstalled, the uninstaller itself remains on your machine.

There are so many things wrong with how Sony is handling this it borders on parody. Unfortunately, it seems that the larger a company grows, the dumber it gets. Call it the inverse law of success. As it stand now, I don't think Sony is going to quite get the message until one of two things happen:

1) Microsoft patches Windows to the point where nothing like this can be installed on any machine running Windows, period

2) Sony gets slapped with a class-action lawsuit the likes of which its never even heard of.

Considering the way Sony has handled this, I'm actually betting the only question is which of those two examples happens first.

Best Use of Board Gaming Ever

Thanks to CdS reader Nathan for pointing out this site which shows exactly what Star Wars geeks with a goal can accomplish. If you're even remotely into tabletop games, this is an absolute must-view. Here's why:

IQ Limit on Running Your Own Business?

The longer I work for my current boss, the more convinced I become that I'm too smart to run my own business. Every decision he makes seems intentionally calculated to be the dumbest move possible. Take tonight for example - he has a big presentation to make in Chicago at the end of the week, so he has a bunch of us gather together print materials to send out overnight. Not that bad, you might say. Add this gem to it - our ftp site went down on Friday, and he decides to shoot down all of my suggestions at moving on to someone else because he wants things exactly the same and doesn't want to have to pay for a solution.

Here's the fun part - the ftp site may as well have been a server farm in some guy's living room. That's what I pegged it as six months ago when they stopped communicating with us all together. I immediately told the boss this and that we needed a backup plan, or to move on to anywhere else quickly. Since we were paying $150 a month in hosting fees for a ton of storage and bandwidth usage, his answer was that we'd "ride it out."

I guess that horse went belly-up Friday. Trigger is no more, sayeth Teh Lord. Amen.

On the flip side, I located a bunch of other streaming media vendors today while under extreme pressure from El Jefe to do 100 other things all at the same time. I frequently wonder if he's on the same planet as the rest of us, because while he may see himself as a visionary, his staff views him as a ferret on speed with about half the IQ.

Oh what fun it is to ride in this one horse open sleigh. Especially when the horse is dead weight dragging the sleigh down the hill at terrifying speeds and the only thing you can do is hang on and shriek like a little girl.

Further Stem Cell Development

CNN.com has this story that is chock full of future potential. Imagine a world where stem cells could be bio-engineered and programmed to repair damaged organs. People talk about the need to clone things like internal organs, but let me use a dear friend of mine as an example of why this is not the best way to go.

My dear friend was born with a defective heart and through her life has experienced numerous surgeries to keep a failing organ afloat. Were doctors able to clone it, they would essentially be replacing one failed organ for another. If, on the other hand, we had about 50 years of tech gains from the story linked above, then something else entirely might be possible.

Stem cells are essentially blank documents that your body programs as needed. As listed in the story above, scientists have injected a person's own stem cells into their heart to help repair the muscle after an attack. What if scientists were able to bio-engineer stem cells so that they could not only repair damage, but also entirely rebuild an organ? Then scientists could take a person's stem cells, do some funky sci-fi magic to it, grow a brand new, healthy organ that wouldn't be rejected by a person's immune system, then replace the failed organ with the new one.

Presto, we're one stem closer to immortality. At the very least, this would save literally millions of lives from the simple fact that humans are, as a species, susceptible to any number of illnesses and defects that shorten our life spans. I hope that what we're seeing now are the first steps towards gains in health care technology.

My Fair Lady just pointed out that grocery stores are starting to use lasers to burn onto fruit information like which country it was picked in, what time it was picked in, blood type, favorite color, and most romantic date. Isn't technology grand?

Kong is King... For Three Hours

Here is the official trailer for Peter Jackson's latest love letter to cinema, King Kong. While impressive as hell, I can't shake the fact that it's a three hour movie about a giant ape run amok. I'm a long-time lover of the original black&white film, but that sure as hell wasn't three hours because there isn't three hours of story there.

Then again, I happily spent 9 hours+ following two dwarves who have to drop a gold ring into some lava to blow up a flaming eyeball, so what do I know?

Drawing the Line at the Decorative Cabbage

My Fair Lady and I went to the Dallas Farmer's Market this morning to look around. Just because, that's why. Anyway, we're looking at the wide variety of pansies, ferns, ivy, and mums and she points out something specific. She identifies one plant as decorative cabbage. It was at this point when it hit me that sometimes plants have truly silly names. I don't look at something that reminds me of a big yellow weed and call it a mum. Nor do I look at a small green plant and immediately think of it as "decorative cabbage."

I don't think that's quite what the British used it for during the London bombings of WWII. Somehow, the image of Winston Churchill telling Londoners to never stop fighting, and never stop using cabbage to spruce up their bombed-out decor doesn't quite jive. But it's a novel idea. That being said, I couldn't quite bring myself to buy any because I have no idea how I would explain it to friends and family who would visit in the future. The conversation might go something like this:

Mom: Hello all. My, what colorful plants you have in your front yard. What is that?

Me: That's the decorative cabbage, mom. If you'll pardon the expression, we thought it added some flavor to the front of the house.

Mom: Isn't that what Londoners ate while the Nazis bombed them?

Aren't You a Little Skanky For a Stormtrooper?

No, I'm not posting how I came across this site but if you're part of the Star Wars uber-nerd patrol, then it's a must see.

If only to shake your head in disbelief.

Oh Nos Teh Dramah!11!!

God help me, but I just want it over. The ridiculous level of drama that has engulfed my gaming site, Gaming Trend has got to stop. You might notice how there is basically a "JUST SOLD!" sign at that link, and you have to add forums to the end of it to go anywhere. As discussed below, Rich LaPorte of Gone Gold infamy has now officially struck back. I'll post his statement before I post by Editor-In-Chief's follow-up. Here's Rich's own words about the situation:

24-Oct-2005 23:43

I thought you might be interested to know what's going on with Ron Burke and "Console Gold". About a year before GG closed, Ron wanted to buy CG from me and we agreed upon $9,000 for the domain. I've never seen a dime, but I haven't asked for any either. I did ask that he run my GoGamer ads and links until the site was paid for since I was paying for server and domain fees, but that request went ignored.

Finally he left the server, so now I'm only stuck for domain fees, which is only $30 a year anyway, but still, it's costing me money. Recently, he contacted me about getting the domain switched to his name. (We agreed to keep it in mine until the 9K was paid... after all, it's the only way for me to maintain control.)

I didn't want to come out and mention the 9K immediately, so I mentioned that I would look into it, seeing if I could make him a contact, while maintaining the domain in my name. Unfortunately, I had gotten ill and then had more surgery, so it took me awhile to get back to him.

During that time, he sent numerous e-mails to me asking if there's been any word. Now that I'm back on, I sent an e-mail explaining that I would be "in everyone's best interest" if the domain stayed in my name until our agreement was met. I then asked him if he had any idea what we could do to complete our agreement, since the site is still costing me money, however
minimal.

I still haven't heard back from him, which is not like him. I'm wondering if he may try something like, getting a different domain and switching it (like *.org or *.net). What do you think?

If he would like to renegotiate the agreement, I'm even willing to do that (Hell, SOME of 9K is better than NONE of 9K, right?)... I'm a bit worried to be honest, especially since that money would come in very handy.

(At the end of GG and the reason it finally shut its doors, was that 3 companies and Mario Knoll didn't pay their advertising fees... the deal with Ron was going to keep GG alive, but as I said, he never paid me, nor did he run my ads so I could make something off the site to support it.)

I'm thinking of writing him a couple of more times and if I don't here from him, have the domain turned off... I hate to do that, but I know if done, I'll hear from him rather quickly.

26-Oct-2005 10:08

I decided to switch the CG domain to an "under-construction" page. I'm sure fireworks are going to go off shortly, but I'm tired of being a "nice guy".

Was on the forum tonight and saw a thread about the closing of GG. I'm not sure if I ever told you, but it was an accident that the site closed, while I was in the hospital and by the time I got out, I decided the damage was done and since I didn't have the strength at the time to correct it, I figured I would just "disappear". Not the way I wanted it to happen, but so much of my life is not the way I have planned it.

26-Oct-2005 13:23

At about 7:30 PM my time, I went to Network Solutions and changed the domain name to point to an "Under Construction" page. I also removed any technical contacts that where listed, aside from myself. After all, it is my account, right? Why should anyone be listed on it w/o my permission?

At 9:30 PM my phone rings... It's Ron Burke. Yelling into the answering machine, he leaves the following message: "Rich, I need you to call me IMMEDIATELY." and hangs up.

Mary Jo asked me if I'm going to talk to him and I told her no. I think I would rather handle it all via e-mail, so I have a copy of what is said and what is agreed upon. I did the same when negotiating the sale of the domain, so I see no reason to handle it any differently this time. Without the original copy of Ron's e-mail agreeing to the sale of the domain for 9K, it would be just my word against his. Better to have everything written down I think and besides, with the surgery to my throat, it stills hurts to talk.

I was in bed for the night when he called, but I decided to check my e-mail to see if he at least tried to contact me that way. Unfortunately, he didn't. To my surprise, there wasn't any e-mail from him. He went straight to the phone.

What has me curious though, is how he knows I put in for changes. Since I am the only one on the account, how could he know? I have changed all my passwords to be on the safe side. The only thing I can think of is that the "technical contact" was notified that he had been removed from the account listing and that is what has Ron upset.

However, he sounded way too upset to think that his only problem was not having a technical contact should something go wrong. Besides, it looked like the contact was for "Everyone's Internet", while his hosting seems to be through "Host Gator" and they don't seem to be connected. Wish I knew more about how this all worked.

Of course I'm starting to feel badly, but I'm sticking to my guns. He ignores my e-mail about our agreement, but finds the time to call me immediately once changes have been made... Which again is a bit weird since none of the changes have taken place yet, I simply applied for them. It will take 42-78 hours for them to take effect.

27-Oct-2005 04:21

Please feel free to tell my side to anyone, publicly or privately. I refuse to jump in for MANY reasons, but having the truth out there would at least level the field.

Having Game Trends in the wings tells me one thing... Ron was NEVER going to keep his end of the agreement, period. Why else would he have the other site, "month's in the working" as the post on CG says. I laughed when I read that the fact this is happening one year since GG was shut down is no coincidence. lol Actually, it is.

As far as me going to read the other forums, when GG shut down I considered myself gone from the gaming community for good and plan to keep it that way. If it makes everyone feel better to hate me, so be it. I don't deal with anyone and don't plan on doing so, so let them rant if it helps. I have no ill feelings towards anyone and can understand their frustration to a degree.

I just wonder when no one is mad at Ron? Heck, he had a year to do something about Console Gold. He KNEW he didn't own it. Why did he stay so long? Why didn't he protect his community and move to a new domain as soon as he knew I was getting out of the community.

Because he wanted to try and play me. Hoping that I would just give him the site or probably die shortly and he would have it anyway. He's so pissed because he got caught publicly and now he rather it be my fault than his own.

Feel free to convey any of these thoughts as well my friend.

27-Oct-2005 04:46

One of the things that IS bothering me is that the community does indeed suffer once again. I honestly thought this would be a day or two "inconvenience", but it seems that the "Under Construction" page will be up longer than I imagined. Since it doesn't cost me anything, I don't care, but I would like to help out those that come to the site looking for the forums.

For obvious reasons, I do not want to direct people to Ron's site, but would like to point to the Forum's you mentioned. Not sure how they are set up, but can a URL point to them? I would gladly allow it to point to them for the rest of this years domain fee and next.

That would mean, come April 07, the domain is no longer on my dime, however they are welcome to keep it if they want to take over the expense.

I'm sure they're going to ask "Why would I give them the domain, but not Ron?". Anyone that followed GG for any amount of time knows I'm a big "principle's" guy. RON agreed to pay 9K for the domain, no one else. If he had offered half, I would have given it to him... Hell, if he was honest up front at told me he wouldn't buy it, I may have given it to him... but he didn't.

SO my offer to them is that the domain can point to their forum and in a year and a half, it's theirs to own if they want, free of charge.

If they ask to have their URL pointed to on the "Under Construction" page, tell them that I believe this is just a generic page in which I can make no changes. If I find out differently, I'll gladly list their URL with their permission.

At least this way, the community will have somewhere to go.

28-Oct-2005 10:01

Wanted to ask your opinion before posting, but got on with Tech Support to find out how I go about putting up a page of my own and I wound up posting it. (It only cost me 15 bucks for a year, so I did it. Once the year is out, the domain will most likely go back to an "Under Construction" page.)

Once it was too late to wait to post, I asked MJ if she thought it was appropriate or too strong and she thought it was fine since it mentions no names and at least some explanation to people.

I wanted to direct people to the OO site for two reasons. One, you told me they are the old GG community and two, since you told me Ron is all over their forums, I'm sure he has posted his new link, so eventually old CG's will find their way to him. I did this for the gamers and not for Ron, of course. If it were for Ron, I would have linked directly to the new site.

Today was the first time I've been to the site and went only to the main page for the URL, but was very impressed with what I saw. I hope with this link they'll get some more good people to post and please apologize to them for me if their forums are a mess... I didn't mean for that to happen of course. Also, if they want that linked removed, I will honor their request.

Anything I say to you, please feel free to relay to other's, unless I ask you otherwise.

The comment on the main page of CG is the most I will contribute to this conversation publicly. Let Ron blast me as he likes... in the end, what does it all matter? That's why I'm not going to bother reading anything because I'm only human and know I will be dragged in trying to defend myself. My time is more valuable than that.

Okay then, that's one side of the story. Here's the other side, Ron Burke's response:

I'll gladly discuss.

First up - I don't doubt the legitimacy of this email, it does have the specific price we agreed on. I'm sure all of this is 'true', from Rich's point of view. Unfortunatately, this doesn't jive with the reality of the situation.

As I've said before, Rich and I agreed on a price and I agreed to pay him. However, he has left a great deal out of this email. Since he is airing the laundry, lets get it all out of the basket, k?

Roughly 18 months ago I negotiated with Rich (who appeared out of nowhere) to purchase the domain ConsoleGold.com. Certain expectations were set forth:
- Rich was to pay for the domain registrations
- Rich was to pay for the hosting for our site until the domain purchase balance was paid in full (or as it was stated "Until we get on our feet financially")
- The price agreed upon was based on further support by Gone Gold. We would work together to make all of this happen.
- Rich picked up a cell phone and gave me the number. "Call anytime Ron. Let's stay in touch."

So lets tackle these in order.
- Rich paying for domain hosting - didn't happen. Eldon paid for year one, I paid for year 2,3,4. I can get receipts and post them if you'd like.
- Rich paying for hosting: Stephen couldn't keep the server stable, so we had to leave. I'll give him the pass on this one, but I've paid the server costs for the last several years at $50.00 a month + the cost of shipping. Again, I have receipts. As for getting on our feet, we are still several thousand dollars in the hole financially. We have yet to turn a profit - CG, and now GT, are run out of my pocket entirely.
- Further support by GG - didn't happen in any shape or fashion whatsoever.
- Stay in touch. I've got registered letters, dozens of phone calls to two phones, and dozens of emails that have gone unanswered.

After all of that, what would you do? We started THINKING about moving months ago. We started PLANNING on moving about 2 weeks ago. Anything after that point is past the point of no return.

Did I call on the day he shafted the community? I called the number that I got off of Netsol when I noted that it had been updated. When the site went down I called Hostgator, my terrible terrible ex-host who is prone to falling over all the time. When they said that the NS servers had changed, I knew something was wrong. I called Netsol and was told that Rich had logged in and changed the NS. The gig was up at that point.

Did I intend to honor my end of the deal? You are damned right I did. Am I gonna send checks to somebody who won't pick up the phone (I guess his throat hurt for the last 18 months) or make an attempt to make a contact of any kind? No. I don't know if my checks are going to Rich or Juan Valdez. Since Registered mail didn't work, why should I think my check would arrive? At this point he is absolutely right...he has broken our contract and broken my trust. It really wouldn't have taken any effort from him to get this deal on track. Mary Jo could have called, he could have written, he could have done anything...but instead, he did what he has always done - nothing.

In short, Rich can go fly a kite. Here's where things don't add up at all. He says that despite Ron calling him, he decided to keep it strictly to e-mail. Oh, and his throat was sore after a surgery. Hey Rich, that's why you type up a list of questions, hand the phone to your wife Mary Jo, and have her ring Ron right back. So right there is indeed a massive communications problem, not to mention the most glaring one of all:

Instead of registering at OO and posting this himself, he "approves" his friend Andy (who's a nice guy, by the way) to post their e-mail correspondence on the forum. As though this will automagically absolve him of any wrongdoing in the past and bring the faithful flock back into his good graces. Hey Rich, this one's for you:



You may have once held tight my good will along with that of others, but from now until the end of time you will be the dirt I scrape off my shoe. Anything you do with your sites now is irrelevant to us, and that is just fine. Go your own way, and we'll go ours.

Munich

I'm honestly stunned by the simple beauty of this one-sheet for Spielberg's next film. While I outright hated War of the Worlds, I have high hopes for this story of the Israeli vengence which followed the massacre of their athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. It hits Christmas day which, in my opinion, sucks because I won't get to see it until later that week. But even when Spielberg is off, his talent and skill are lightyears ahead of the rest of Hollywood and I'm dying to see what he has in store for us. This is my most anticipated film next to Harry Potter 4.

And Then There Was Gaming Trend...

So the site I worked for went belly up today, and no one knew why until a few hours ago. Long story short, the original owner proved himself to be a vindictive ponce and screwed us. As such, long live Gaming Trend. It's not live yet, but should be by the weekend. Feel free to stop by the forums and sign up for some quality conversation and fun.

This accelerates a plan that was to go into effect at the first of the year, so while we were obviously caught off-guard, a back-up plan was already well under way. As it stands, our contacts in the gaming world to a one are supportive of this move and happy that we're now standing on our own. The plans we have in store for the site are massive in scope, and the last hindrance to us moving forward with those plans is now out of the way.

Viva le Gaming Trend and a big screw off goes out to the man who backstabbed us.

Greatest. Videos. Ever.

By now, I think I've watched this video about a dozen times and I'm still gasping for air. Let's just say they're teaching something in China these days that's definitely not on the US curriculum. For additional fun, check out this link for more. God help me, this is some of the funniest stuff I've seen in a while.

Why Can't They Just Shut Up and Game?

If you listen to Microsoft and Sony talk about their respective next-generation systems, it's almost impossible to separate the outright lies from the outright bullshit. Frankly, I'm sick of it. Everytime either company opens its mouth, nothing but crap flows out. Instead of recognizing how blatantly they're insulting a public that is starting to know better, they just keep at it like everything they say is pure gold. Only Nintendo is out there showing off their TV remote and acknowledging that they're a strange company with wacky ideas, but at least they can honestly say they're trying something new.

If you want to see how far up his own ass Microsoft Cheerleader J. Allard's head is, check out this interview at Edge Online and reveal in such bon mots as:

"You know, being first you sometimes get some crap, and we’ve had some crap. But I think it’s very pro-consumer and very pro-developer, and I think that in five years everybody will look back and say that this was a very, very good move on our part to launch worldwide and to have the flexibility for consumers to decide on their products."

He's referring to the double-dip customers are walking in to come late November. The scaled down version of the Xbox 360 and the normal version with all the trimmings.

He's still reciting the company line that gimping the main console and promoting it as a "good idea" is sound business. I guess walking around saying "this is fucking stupid" wouldn't have gone over well with Big Bill, whose ego, I'm convinced, has completely gone over the cliff.

There was a story a few weeks ago that told of a meeting between Big Bill and one of the Sony heads where Bill tried to convince the Sony guy to move Blu-Ray tech closer towards HD-DVD in terms of PC compatibility. The Sony guy told Bill that Blu-Ray tech would work just fine as it is. The translation was simple: the Hollywood studios, notoriously fickle when it comes to security, realized that Blu-Ray used more secure codecs than HD-DVD and was planning on announcing how they were collectively jumping to that one format. Microsoft freaked out because suddenly their arch-rival was about to reap a windfall, and suddenly they're promoting HD-DVD instead of remaining neutral as they'd first planned.

In a word, Big Bill found himself pwned.

But as much as I rag on Microsoft for routinely proving themselves to be the 800-lbs. gorilla people love to hate on, Sony is about as far from innocent as its possible to get. Everytime the Sony head (whose name honestly escapes me) talks about how powerful and uber-awesome the PS3 will be, my head hurts. E3 this year was nothing but vaporware for Sony because it's since been proven that everything they showed was pre-rendered based on spec technology.

Translation: Ignore everything you saw at E3 2005 because it may or may not be close to reality.

We'll find out next year when the PS3 hits (in theory) but I personally agree with Bill Harris - Sony is way behind and will never once cop to it. Why should they? Microsoft is openly insulting the public by throwing a crap unit into the marketplace for no reason other than they can say they have launch unit at $299. Sony coming in at $450 or higher just will not sell in the States, period. So who cares whether the public gets hosed in the process?

The bright side of things is that two warring companies pissing on the little guy, historically, always has the same effect. The little guy wakes up, and learns more about what's going on then takes steps to ensure this doesn't happen again. Microsoft and Sony both are going to learn a hard, harsh lesson come generation four when the people they hosed this round, are looking elsewhere in the next round.

Don't F.E.A.R. the Reaper

I'm currently working on my F.E.A.R. review over at Gaming Trend which hopefully will be up next week, and I have to say I'm impressed. My thoughts on the demo was that the gunfights were amazing to the point where they demanded replay after replay, and Alma was one heck of a creepy villain. After playing a few hours worth last night, I finally arrived at the office building where the majority of the story supposedly takes place.

Two things: The first is that I'm honestly surprised it took as long as it did to get to this point, and two is a simple HOLY CRAP!!!

The second the chopper you're riding in lands on the roof the office building, you come under fire. Instantly hoping out and returning fire leads to one of the most intense gun battles I've ever played. The AI is nothing short of amazing, and I can't wait to see how it reacts when I up the difficulty. The gunfights lead to debris and smoke flying everywhere, along with hugely bloody effects. For example, I was flanked by two enemy soldiers who were crouching behind crates. I opted to charge the one on the right and as I left over the top of the crate I discharged my combat shotgun and the blast tore his head clean off. I landed close enough to the one on the left that when I fired into his midsection, it blew him in half.

I immediately reloaded and played through the scenario several more times. I think I honestly spent an hour on that rooftop last night just fighting the soldiers in different ways, and watching how much of the terrain we destroyed. It's brilliant fun, and if you just turn off shadows it runs smoothly.

I can't wait to get inside and see what else is in store.

So it's been a while...

It must be disheartening to my three readers that almost a month has gone by with no updates or thoughts. Or maybe my ego is still flying high from last night. Either way, here's in brief what's been going on:

The last three weeks were devoted to work and nothing but. While My Fair Lady was consumed by event after event and two massive legal papers at school, I found myself spending more than a few extra hours at the office. My production company was responsible for crafting a 35 minute show for a Las Vegas trade show, and did it under the tightest deadlines I've seen in a long time. March, actually. Which was when we did our last trade show.

I cannot stress enough how poor the time management is at my current company.

For example, we have nine clients who appear in this video. All well and good by itself, but when sales is not explicitly given a cut-off date, what happens? More and more sales will be made, and the time frame to put together the show shrinks because the deadline for the show to be completed never changed. So as that window shrinks, tensions frequently rise, but nothing comes of it because the executive level gives not one care about how put upon the workers are. To them, the working class should simply do what they're told and remain grateful they're employed.

Capitalism in full swing, baby.

So the primary editor and primary writer on the show spent pretty much every waking moment at the office for two weeks straight pounding this beast out. The rest of us took care of any and all day-to-day work because we all knew that we'd have little to no time to create all of the deliverables (i.e. DVD/CD/VHS copies among other things) once they finished the show. As it turns out, we had even less time than that because Project Management made more promises than they should have, and production's Vaunted Leader agreed. Like she does with everything that's handed down From Above. Regardless, we wound up with basically three days in which we had to do a week's worth of work. Having experienced this sort of deadline for a semester and a half while working as Entertainment Editor at the TCU newspaper, I felt confident we could do it.

Complete everything with time to spare was exactly what we did. The problem is, it should never have come to that. Even worse is knowing that despite a debriefing meeting the following Monday, where we made suggestions on what we can do better in the future, is that nothing if going to change. Period, end of story. The next trade show is going to be handled in the exact same manner, and those of us on the short end of the stick will get shafted. Joy.

It's times like these I find myself wanting to be my own boss. I create my own hours, set my own rates, and if I feel like treating myself to a movie during my lunch hour(s) then so be it.

Now is time for me to run out on an errand. More later today comeplete with updates on what happened last night to keep me up until 2 a.m. yet remain wide awake today, details on one of the best action games this year, along with some brief thoughts on why Batman Begins is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time.