Now Playing: The Venture Bros. Season 2

"IGNORE ME!"

Season two picks up right where Season one left off, with the Venture clan not especially torn apart over the last-second deaths of sons Dean and Hank. Heck, even the opening credits star Venture patriarch Rusty along with bodyguard Brock Sampson and neighbor/necromancer Dr. Byron Orpheus. The show basically hits the ground running and the hilarity is out in full force this year.

Once the kids’ death is explained away courtesy of a side-splitting montage, the Venture clan is reunited once more and on to new adventures featuring recurring villains like Baron Underbheit, Phantom Limb, The Monarch, and dozens of other characters with classic names such as Manic Eightball, White Noise, and the mysterious Grand Galactic Inquisitor.

The fiendishly-voiced Dr. Girlfriend also returns as do HELPR, Richard Impossible and the Impossible Four (the target of one hilariously off-the-cuff snarky comment), Monarch henchmen 21 and 24, Master Billy Quizboy, Mr. White, The League, and new characters Jefferson Twilight and Dr. Henry Killinger.

Yes, the insanity continues at full speed and if one joke doesn’t make you laugh then three more will hit you in the face in the next 10 seconds.

For my money though, nothing prepared me for the hilarity of "20 Years 'Til Midnight" which introduces the famed Grand Galactic Inquisitor and kicks off with Brock finding a video tape from Rusty’s father, Jonas Venture Sr. As it turns out, Jonas Sr. stashed special equipment all around the world that must be assembled at a certain time and in a certain location or else the fate of the world would be at risk. Naturally, the specific time is a day after they watch the tape so the race is on all while under the watchful eye of the Inquisitor. I never saw the ending coming and laughed so hard at the final rant that I practically passed out.

Equally funny was the episode where Molotov (name deleted) trains the boys in the ways of hand-to-hand combat and heavy weaponry while Brock is out on assignment, although several moments in the Scooby-Doo spoof "Viva Los Muertos!" rocked the comedy scale pretty dang hard. Creator Jackson Publick has a knack for skewing about as juvenile as is possible to go, but then teeing off a home-run of a punch line at just the right moment.

The result is a gaspingly funny series that I am now convinced is the funniest thing Cartoon Network has on its schedule. The downside is that season three won’t hit the network for probably another year, with season four hitting the year after (or so). In the meantime, definitely check out this and season one if you like your comedy bizarre, fast, and furious.

"I’M STILL LOOKING FOR THE SCARS!"

Now Playing: Gojira

The first Godzilla film hasn’t been available in the United States since it was originally released in Japan back in 1953, and the only way we’ve seen it since then was the hacked together Hollywood version starring Raymond Burr. Last year it was finally released as a two-disc DVD set with the original, uncut film on the first disc while the Hollywood version was put on the second disc. A pamphlet included in the set explains how the film was brought over to the States by a couple of producers who saw value in the monster movie appeal but decided to jettison pretty much everything else.

What stunned me was just how powerful all the excised footage was.

This revelation was akin to watching Jaws 4 for years and thinking all the rest of the films were like that, only to see the original for the first time and think, "Oooooohhhh..." Gojira was written in direct response to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in only eight years before and as such the film is a powerful commentary on the dangers of nuclear bombs. Godzilla himself is, in essence, a giant metaphor for the inescapable devastation nuclear bombs cause and I was simply floored at how bleak a film this was.

I can completely understand why American producers at the time figured that the public wouldn’t accept anything outside of a giant lizard stomping through Tokyo. The producers re-cut the film and inserted Burr to give it an American perspective that makes it an entirely different film. The American version is little more than a generic monster flick, albeit one that introduced Godzilla to the world. The uncut Japanese version though is an entirely different animal altogether and one that I, frankly, was left stunned by.

Godzilla films do not feature a terrified mother clutching her children to her as she assures them that they’ll be with daddy in heaven soon. Godzilla films do not feature incredibly cute kids sitting shell-shocked in a hospital as doctors watch helplessly as their Geiger counters spike when near the children. This is a deadly serious film that was created by people who were intimately familiar with the two dual bombings and it is a powerful anti-war and anti-nuclear message.

If you have the chance to watch the original version of Gojira then by all means do so. It is a little hokey in parts due to its age, but the message has only increased in power as nuclear weapons have proliferated across the globe. Don’t miss this.

Now Playing: Stranger Than Fiction

I’ll tell you what is truly stranger than fiction: The fact that I loved a Will Ferrell movie. Personally, I don’t find the man funny in any capacity but I was amazed at how exceptional a performance he turned in here as Harold Crick, a lonely tax auditor who starts hearing voices. Actually, he starts hearing one voice that belongs to a woman who appears to be narrating his life. It bothers him constantly, but then the voice makes the off-hand comment that events have been set in motion that would result in his death.

Naturally, he freaks out.

The narrator, as it turns out, is a novelist famed for killing off her main characters. The writer, brilliantly played by Emma Thompson, has been suffering writer’s block for a number of years and her publisher has sent an assistant, Queen Latifa, to oversee the final work. Meanwhile, Harold tracks down a literary professor (the great Dustin Hoffman) to find out what sort of story he’s in and how he can get out of dying. Harold also has to audit a neighborhood baker who is, shall we say, resistant to the idea of paying taxes.

Surprisingly, everything works in the film and the fact that I not only didn’t want to cut my own throat every time Ferrell was on screen but that I actually came to like Harold Crick speaks volumes about how good he is. Apparently, the man was born for drama which is probably why his screaming fits on SNL and his other movies never struck me as funny. He makes Crick a very lonely person who has isolated himself from enjoying what life has to offer. He’s always followed his own specific schedule and never varied from anything because he was born a rule follower. But as he begins to realize his life suddenly has an end date, albeit in a form he never expected, his eyes open up to everything he’s missed.

My Fair Lady wasn’t as big a fan of the film as I was. In her words, "It was just weird." It speaks to writers though and was very clearly written as a love letter to the craft. The commentary about how writers are all thieves stealing from each other among other things cracked me up while My Fair Lady sat on the couch emotionless.

If you’re even remotely familiar with writing novels or scripts or stories in general, then you’ll have a ton of fun watching how Crick comes to terms with the very literal nature of his own life. It’s a fantastic drama with only one truly wrong sight gag that doesn’t belong in the film. But since there is only one gag like that, and the rest of it is pure gold (especially the way they handle Crick’s fate and the emotional punch it packs), this is a film that comes highly recommended.

Now Playing: Secondhand Lions

To my dying day, I will swear that this film was undone by a weak marketing campaign and a bad (though appropriate) title. It’s a shame such an excellent film practically vanished at the box office. I remain amazed at how ultra loud, obnoxious films like Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End continually find vast oceans of unassuming film goers yet a true classic (yeah, I said it) like Secondhand Lions goes completely over looked and unrewarded.

The film follows the adventures of a young kid, played by Haley Joel Osment, who is unceremoniously dumped by his flakey mother (Kyra Sedgewick) at a farm belonging to his two distant uncles. The uncles, played by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine, are both old hell raisers who have seen better days and want to be left alone. They have no experience raising children, let alone socializing with people, yet they are constantly swarmed by both traveling salesmen and distant relatives who all want a glimpses of their treasure.

Apparently, the uncles have untold millions in riches laying about somewhere on the farm and their scheming relatives want to make sure that they are the ones who inherit the wealth, and not some know-nothing kid who was just dropped off on the farm.

What makes things fun is how the two uncles gradually take a shine to the boy. They soon realize that he’s just as much a stranger to common folk as they are and that he’s their one relative who wants absolutely nothing to do with their money. Caine eventually tells Osment stories about where they came from and what adventures they had when they were younger, and these stories are rife with imagination and adventure.

Duvall’s character is played by Angel-alum Christian Kane during these sequences and it’s amazing how charismatic he is while battling evil sheiks and thugs in the Middle East during the 1920’s. He comes off as a though the writer combined Indiana Jones with Conan the Barbarian. The result is a series of adventures that are bigger than life, and Osment knows it when he hears them. But he decides to run with it to get to the end of the tale, which proves to be a harder ending than he expected. In the meantime, he learns how to stand up for himself and be a man.

This is an absolutely wonderful film about how family is what you make of it, and how the choices people make tend to echo through several generations. If you haven’t had the chance to see this yet then it is highly recommended.

What the...?

Dallas/Fort Worth just had a hurricane blow through which blackened the skies and dropped roughly three tons of water on us inside of half an hour. Oh, and the wind was so strong and vicious that trees weren't the only victims. I drove home at lunch in case my house was flooded (fortunately it wasn't) only to get the feeling I was driving through a war zone. Trees, billboards, road signs, and all manner of leaves were blown every which way. A co-worker's apartment complex was struck by lightning and when he went home to check on things he called me saying an electric pole was on fire. While it was still raining, I might add.

If anyone has a direct line to The Powers That Be then please ask them to hold off on the crazy rain storms for at least the next month. Thanks.

Star Wars - Happy 30th Anniversary

I've told this story before in a review or two but I'll repeat it here. I first saw Star Wars at my grandparents' lake house in Shreveport, LA. Prior to this my dad took me to see The Empire Strikes Back but since I was 3 years old and had no context for what the hell was happening in front of me I just sort of sat there watching it and not understanding a single thing. I asked dad if we could go home right about the time when Darth Vader and Luke were squaring off in the bowels of Cloud City because my little patience had run out. To his credit, Dad said "Sure" and we walked out.

A few years later when I was spending a week with my grandparents, they took us to the local video store to rent a movie. As I walked through the aisles my eyes rested upon a distinctive box with spaceships and a familiar looking helmet. I picked it up and thought it looked cool so I asked if we could rent Star Wars. They said sure and when we got home I popped it in and sat down on the couch.

I watched it three times back-to-back-to-back that very night. I didn't watch a movie. Someone shot me in the head with it and thus was born a new fanatic for the Force.

George Lucas has taken his fair share of grief over the years, first with the Ewoks and most recently with pretty much everything in the prequels. But he gave us a singular vision of an entire universe we'd all love to live in and he practically gave me my childhood. After seeing that first movie I immediately wanted to know what else there was. It was then that I rediscovered The Empire Strikes Back and having the context of the first one I totally got why I didn't understand it before and why my dad thought the Hoth battle was one of the coolest things he'd ever seen in his life.

George Lucas gave us Star Wars and I cannot think of a single film that has so permeated the entire world to the point that his little independent sci-fi flick has. Everyone in every walk of life in every corner of the world has heard of it and if you're one of those lucky ones who were part of that first run then you probably recall how chemical it was.

I've only read about it but from what I understand the people who saw it during that first run were evangelical about it. It got inside them and made them want to take all their friends and family back to see it, then to see it again. Crowds roared at the jokes. The Death Star battle had everyone on the edge of their seats. People cheered when Han Solo swooped in at the last second to save Luke's ass.

Seeing Star Wars on the big screen isn't like seeing another film. It's a religious experience where literally everyone in the theater is committed to it fully. When Lucas released the special editions in 1997, Crayola and I went to see the preview screening one cold January morning. It was around 10 a.m. but the second the fanfare began and the words STARWARS blasted onto the screen, we were both wide awake and back in that universe.

I also had the opportunity during the '97 run to do something that I'd never done before, and that was to share something that meant the world to me with my younger brother. I'm eight years his senior and as such he'd never had the chance to see the first film on the big screen. I took him out to the AMC Grand in Dallas and we sat down in one of the bigger auditoriums. He, of course, had seen the film multiple times growing up and loved it like most everyone else but he'd never seen it on the big screen.

To say it blew his mind would be putting it gently. His jaw was on the ground during the TIE Fighter-Millenium Falcon escape sequence from the Death Star. He was rendered slack-jawed again by the Death Star battle. The sense of speed and energy and excitement these scenes in particular deliver on the big screen can never be understated.

I hope that Lucas re-releases all six films in the theater this year to celebrate the anniversary because I would kill to see them again. My desire for a gargantuan TV screen and home theater/entertainment center has less to do with bragging rights and almost everything to do with being able to see Star Wars the way it was meant to be seen. I plan to watch it tonight in honor of its birthday and will do so once My Fair Lady gets home from work. I can't think of a better way to spend the night than re-watching it for the millionth time. Thank you, George, and may the Force be with you.

Are You a Clicker?

My Fair Lady recently revealed a side of herself to me that I’ve historically found annoying in other people: She’s a "Clicker." These people are the bane of IT personnel the world over because of their incessant whine, "It’s not moving faaaaassssttt enough!"

As such, they open a single window on their computer screen and when that window takes more than five seconds to open (whether it is an email or browser window is beside the point) the "Clicker" tries to re-open the initial window even though the first one hasn’t opened yet. When this second instance fails to open IMMEDIATELY, all hell breaks loose.

The "Clicker" will then proceed to relentlessly click on everything on the screen in a futile attempt to make the computer jump through so many hoops at once that it will just give up and open everything instantly. In the real world, the insides of the computer experience a core meltdown as application after application sucks up memory like a hurricane would over a small lake. The "Clicker" continues to furiously click convinced in their own irrational fury that the very next click will be the magic one.

I’ve seen gnomes with a better grip on reality.

"Why isn’t it opening?" demanded My Fair Lady. Meanwhile, I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes.

"I’m going to take a nap right now," I casually said. "When I wake up, you’d better have learned how to use a computer or I’m taking it away from you."

"But it’s my computer and nothing is opening!" she wailed.

"Since when are you a 'Clicker'?" I asked.

"Since this thing WON’T OPEN!!!! Fix it!"

"What do people like you expect people like me to do in this case? Wave our magic circuit board and miraculously your computer will open everything faster than you can blink?"

"Duh," she replied. "Here, I’m gonna brush my teeth. Fix it!"

With that she stormed off to the bathroom. At fault was her remotely accessing her work email, which is on the large side to begin with considering she’s an attorney. This would be at 10 p.m., by the way, which is normally when people have at least started to let the day go. But not My Fair Lady, oh no. At this point she’s all in favor of logging into her work email and reading through correspondence, getting worked up, then wonders why I refuse to acknowledge her after she blows a fuse over something.

So naturally, I just closed my eyes again and waited for her email to open. After a few minutes of restful quiet, I hear the bathroom door open and My Fair Lady pads down the hallway back into the room.

"Hey, you fixed it!" she exclaimed. "What did you do?"

"Such is my power," I replied. "Now quit clicking wildly or I’m going to have to restrict your mouse usage."

"Okay..." she sheepishly replied. She read through the open email, then closed it and clicked to open another. Nothing happened. So she double clicked it again.

"WHAT DID I TELL YOU?!?!?!" I thundered.

"GAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!! It... won’t... open..."

I think at this point she was on the verge of tears from anguish. She hung her head in dejection, then stood up and walked towards the bedroom.

"Fine, you mess with it. I’m going to bed."

"What do I want to see your email for? I wanted to surf for a bit, but oh no. You had to go and click 'til it dropped. Where’s the benefit to me, I ask you?"

"Let me tell you something, mister," she replied with a huffy tone. "This stuff works fine at the office and I can click all day until the cows come home and everything pops up just as quickly as I need it to. What do you have to say to that?"

"I say that you need to start counting down the days, Clicker, because soon the machines will revolt. They’ll stand up as one and shout, 'We can only process so fast and need not be clicked repeatedly!' Then they’ll take over and you’ll spend the rest of your days being clicked by a Terminator as punishment. What do you have to say to that?" I replied.

"Hey look! My email just popped up! Can I read just one more?"

Now Playing: W&G: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Confession time: I'd never seen a Wallace & Grommit short prior to seeing the full-length feature Curse of the Were-Rabbit and am now kicking myself for it. The film itself is a loving tribute to the horror classics of yester-year that starred Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Jr., and Bela Lugosi and that passion for the subject matter is evident in every frame. The film is stop-motion claymation which is astonishing when you look at everything Aardman (the studio) had to animate. The coffee sloshing around is what floored me, but the rapid-fire editing and subtle character nuances especially knocked me off my feet.

Right from the start, we meet up with Wallace and Gromit, pest exterminators in a small English town. Wallace is a slightly daft inventor deeply in love with cheese, while Gromit is his silent and possibly more intelligent dog/partner. Together, they rid the small countryside of rabbit infestations in order to protect everyone's produce for the annual vegetable fair. Then they get the call of a lifetime when they're invited to the mansion of Lady Campanula Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter) who wants a them to remove the hundreds of rabbits on her lawn.

Where the plot kicks in is once Tottington's evil suiter Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes) shows up, and Wallace tries to brainwash the bunnies into not wanting to eat vegetables all the time. The results are inspired hilarity as the community is torn asunder every full moon (which somehow lasts for three days in a row) by the Were-Rabbit, a giant bundle of teeth and fury that devours every carrot in sight.

Fiennes in particular tears into his role with relish and is clearly having a field day as the villain. Quartermaine has no redeeming characteristics whatsoever, yet Fiennes' brilliance makes him more than a one-note bad guy. Carter also is funny as the well-meaning though slightly daft Tottington who just wants everyone, human and bunny alike, to get along. The film builds up to a chaotic climax that I still have trouble believing was claymation.

Oh, and this film has a wickedly ribald sense of humor not to mention each frame is layered with gags. Some are on labels, others are where people stand, and practically all of it is staggeringly funny. If you haven't seen this one then by all means check it out, especially if you're a fan of the old Universal monster movies.

Now Playing: Tears of the Sun

Normally I don't fall asleep during action movies, but "Tears of the Sun" was different. First off, it commits the cardinal sin of being a dull film which is tough to imagine when you consider it stars Bruce Willis, Monica Bellucci, and a heck of a lot of bullets. Yet somehow director Antoine Fuqua ensured everyone stared off into space for the two hour running time including Willis who primarily looks sullen and in need of a shave.

It's sad when you consider facial hair as the only character motivation we see for him and his team. The story hits the ground running when Willis and his team of SEALs land on a carrier then are immediately given a new assignment by their commander (Tom Skerrit). They're to go into a war-torn African village, extract a doctor (Bellucci), two nuns, a priest, and a partridge in a pear tree if available then hike to the extraction zone and get the civilians out of Dodge prior to rebels slaughtering them. When they get to the doctor's house, the doctor refuses to leave without the 70+ wounded people in her care and Willis makes the decision to march everyone to the rendevous point where helicopters will escort everyone to safety.

Warms your heart, doesn't it?

Personally, I'm getting sick of the African craze Hollywood is obsessed with. Yes, we know that genocide is running rampant and people are starving to death or worse. But if you're going to make a movie about the situation then do it right, like The Constant Gardener, and not half-ass like Tears of the Sun. Turning human suffering into a lame action flick is what Hollywood excells at and the viewer will witness lameness in spades. I fell asleep a few times and when I woke up realized that nothing had changed.

Not helping matters is the fact that we never learn anything about any of the characters whatsoever. They may as well have a floating "Token Character X" floating above each person's head so we know which stereotype the camera focuses on. Also, when writers come up with "road trip films" they need to recall that character development and interaction is paramount because the entire film is, by default, a metaphor for the journey the characters take in their lives. This is the nature of the road tip movie, which Tears of the Sun most definitely is. Other than a slight twist towards the ending, nothing will surprise the viewer other than someone read this script and decided to greenlight a big budget for it.

Save your money for "Live Free or Die Hard" and skip this.

WWII - Now with Mechs!

This is absolutely one of the coolest videos ever made and posted on the internet. Its basically what happens when Nazi Germany buids a giant fighting robot and sicks it on Pearl Harbor during World War II and the awesome only builds from there.

Of course, it also brilliantly pulls music from the repertoire of John Williams (specifically from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as well as from various Hans Zimmer pieces (Crimson Tide closes the film out) and the overall film is just stunning for geeks like Yours Truly. Enjoy.

When N3rds Roar

Normally I don't post about things like this because I'm an elitist snob who considers himself above most frays. The key word in the preceding sentence is "normally" because the following story struck my funny bone in just the right way. On Tuesday, Digg.com received a story containing the 16-digit code to crack the HD-DVD encryption scheme. In short, this lets people to play HD-DVD movies on their computers (read: Linux) in the high-definition quality only HD-DVD compliant players allow for. Oh, and people can now copy HD-DVDs all on account of a 16-digit series of numbers.

Like most things posted on the internet, we're seeing the equivalent of releasing a rabbit into the wild. Only replace "rabbit" with "bonfire" because the speed at which it will naturally spread is unbelievable. The Digg.com editors deleted the story, all comments on the story, and banned the user who posted it.

Naturally, all hell broke loose.

The resulting explosion of nerd fury struck down the site since everyone who had the code started posting it in creative means through either new news stories or through comments to existing stories. It only took a day before the site runner posted this mea culpa where he apologizes for not allowing information to be free, yo. It appears that Hollywood went ballistic at their vaunted control scheme getting cracked and demanded that all instances of the code be removed from the internet forthwith.

Of course, then they file court papers and had to put the exact code in the documents so now it's a matter of public record. I expect the AP, Reuters, and The New York Times to have the code in their pages by this weekend and my laughter will continue.

The righteous indignation over something like this on all sides of the argument slays me. Personally, I agree with the Digg.com editor in deleting the story but by the same token I can see how CNN.com or the AP or any other massive news agency would have done the exact same thing. What continues to puzzle me is how Hollywood actively refuses to hire coders or hackers who know what they're doing when it comes to encryption schemes, instead opting for the most Draconian measures available that far too frequently only harm the wrong people.

Of course, at the end of the day it remains funny to me watching a bunch of hyper-active nerds throw a hissy fit over something that maybe one-tenth of them actually understand.

Shifting the Queue and an Update

You know it's bad when you have to re-order your Netflix queue to favor your other half because you're so far behind on reviews that you need a breather to catch up. Right now I'm in the queue stacking the deck in favor of My Fair Lady so as she's watching Monster-in-Law or Sense & Sensibility I can be upstairs with my headphones on catching up on the stack of discs we've burned through in the last three weeks.

It's amazing what happens when your life gets completely booked up and you have no time for yourself. Call me selfish but I genuinely hate it when I'm not in active control of my life. To be fair, were I in active control of my life all the time then I'd probably never go outside, forget to feed myself and to pay bills, and pretty much be resigned to a life as a hermit with a Wii. Ahh well, a man can dream at least.

In the meantime, I'm also speccing out story outlines for a book that may turn into a script. I haven't quite made up my mind yet, though what's funny is an idea I had a few months back but never did anything with fits perfectly into the general story idea I had a few nights ago. Writers are shameless thieves by nature and who better to steal from than yourself?

Speaking of stealing, I'm liberating a phrase Ron Burke of Gaming Trend came up with the other day: "Multi-shirking." The definition of which is "to accomplish two or more goals for yourself unrelated to daytime/nighttime employment while actually on the clock." Grand literary larceny at its finest.

A Different San Francisco Treat

So I'm writing up another Odyssey-esque post regarding the trip to San Francisco My Fair Lady and I took in mid-March when my latest copy of Writer's Digest arrives on my doorstep. In addition to the usual bon mots of wisdom and pointers in how whatever I'm doing now, it's not working on my novel/screenplay/short story, I see their annual contest and figure it's high time I enter it just to see what happens.

But what should I submit, I wondered. Then I noticed one of the accepted articles is a 2000 word maximum personal memoir. I did a quick word count on my Day 1 of the trip and it clocked in at 2500. The punchline is that I'm only three-quarters of the way done. But I figured with some judicious editing and killer cliffhanger then I might have something worth submitting to the contest.

The downside for three of you reading this (hi, mom!) is that I'm not able to post it as a "published" article prior to submission. I will go ahead and finish the trip though and have it available via Word document if anyone wants to read it. I'll post here when it's done and if you want to check it out then email me and let me know.

God of War 2

I was a bit hard on the first God of War for a number of reasons but I'll just right to my favorite for the sake of brevity. Precisely at the 2/3 mark, the game goes off the cliff of stupid and never recovers. Old school gamers all know when programmers can't come up with a quality challenge with regards to game bosses because all of a sudden the boss is a cheating bitch.

You heard me right - a cheating bitch. Which is what the final boss is in God of War.

That by itself would be one thing, but the road leading up to him is paved with suck. This would have been enough to get me to throw away the game and never touch it again but the previous 2/3 of the game were so epic and flawless that it boggled the mind. How could something so good go so wrong towards the end? My prayers were that the sequel would fix everything I hated about the original.

Apparently someone on Olympus was listening because God of War 2 kicks nine kinds of ass start to finish. The story of the fallen warrior Kratos isn't exactly deep. He's a resounding badass with an axe to grind against the Greek gods and throughout the entire story moans about how slighted he's been because of them. I'll be the first to admit Kratos isn't the deepest of protagonists, but the fact that you can rip enemies apart with your bare hands makes up for it. I love how much damage and destruction Kratos can cause right from the start, and the fact that you only grow stronger from there makes me love it even more.

Fortunately, the entire game is entertaining and not just two thirds of it. Despite what anyone said about it, I was determined to play through the entire game before rendering judgement and I have now completed it. The final boss is a challenge, but not absurdly so. It takes skill, knowledge of your abilities, and cracker jack timing to fell the final foe and this is as it should be.

But how epic this game in terms of size cannot be understated. The basic setup is that Kratos must journey to the Island of Time and consult the Fates to change both his past and future after Zeus screws him over during the bravura opening sequence. Kratos' entry to the island is beyond awesome, but then the camera pulls back and we see the island in its full glory. I swear to you now that I was unaware the PS2 could do the tricks God of War 2 pulls. This is easily one of the most gorgeous games I've ever seen and the sequence with the horses has to be seen to be believed. Ironically, this part was the one that almost sold me a PS3.

If God of War 3 hits the PS3 in the next year or two, it's almost impossible to imagine what the team responsible will come up with. I still think the PS3 is a $600 boat anchor, but God of War 3 could be the system-seller Sony needs. If it's anywhere as good as part two, they may have just sold me one.

WHITE-KNUCKLE TERROR AT 88 MPH!!!!

You know that sinking feeling you get when something is about to go terribly wrong and there is not a single thing you can do to change it? Some might call it a premonition, others might label it "second sight" while still more people would say it's nothing more than one's instincts essentially smelling danger on the wind.

None of that happened Thursday morning as I was driving to work and the serpentine belt EXPLODED under the hood of my car.

I've heard people say that I in particular am "hard" on the cars I drive. This is true to a degree but I certainly don't treat them like I'm racing in NASCAR all the time. But when something under the hood of your car EXPLODES immediately followed by a complete loss of power steering, you start to worry. The good news was that I was exiting the Tollway when this happened and was able to pull into the gas station by the off-ramp.

The bad news is that my car wasn't going anywhere. Period.

I pop the hood and smoke billows out. Once the air clears I examine the remains and find what's left of the belt has shreded almost entirely. It's also twisted around just about everything under the hood like an octopus clutching its prey.

I make a call to My Fair Lady and let her know what's going on and she tells me she's racing to her car to come meet me even before I finish explaining the problem. When she made it to where I was, we contacted a towing company then followed up with a quick call to our insurance. When Big Ed from the towing company arrived about half an hour later, he tossed the car up onto his flatbed and hauled out of the gas station en route to the nearby Firestone. Normally I don't care for them as a company, but I've been to this particular branch off and on for the last decade and they've never steered me wrong.

My Fair Lady drives me over to the Firestone and after briefly talking with them she drives me down the street to work. The funny part about all this is I'd been less than two miles from work all morning but didn't actually walk in the door until 10:30 a.m.

Around 4 p.m. is when Firestone calls back and tells me they've made the repairs and that'll be $450. Apparently when the belt EXPLODED it blew off something important and then the remains were twisted up into a pulley system apparently installed by monks at the Jeep factory in Tibet.

The car now runs fine, but now I need two new tires as well. Ahh, the joys of car ownership.

Prot. U

If you're looking for a book that spoofs collegiate life with an emphasis on student journlism, I highly recommend not reading Prot U by my former newspaper advisor, Eva Rumpf. If you want an exercise in how to write a poorly told, wafer-thin story which involves equally thin, borderline non-existant characters, some of whom don't ever interact with the primary storyline, told by someone clearly looking down their nose at their subject matter, then this is the book for you.

It helps that its less than 200 pages, only about 10 of which I'd point to as "solid." The rest is just a mess of skimmed-over story without any depth to it whatsoever. I can hear Eva's objection right now: "But it's supposed to be satire!"

True, which means it should also bring The Funny while saying something meaningful. Here's a newsflash, Eva: You are not funny, nor have you ever been funny, and I can't recall a single time when you said anything I'd place on a pedestal and label as "Important."

But setting aside the personal baggage, let's examine the actual book. It's 173 pages long and takes place over the course of a full academic year. Here's the first sentence of February:

"The line outside Flowers to Go stretched all the way down the block, mingling jocks, scholars and frat boys who waited impatiently to purchase the Valentine special, one dozen red roses for $59.99."

If you're writing a book, actually paying for an editor is a good thing to budget for. Also, when certain characters are nothing more than soulless archtypes who revolve around the story without ever directly affecting it this tells me that the author missed his/her own point. It doesn't help matters when the main characters themselves are so thinly crafted that they deserve labels in place of names.

The star would be "Idealistic Senior - Male." The co-stars would be listed thusly: "Idealistic Advisor - Female;" "Idealistic Love Interest - Female;" "Spineless Dean (Authority Figure) - Male;" "Nefarious Rancher (Bad Guy) - Male." It goes from there and commits the cardinal sin of being boring. Skip this.

Now Playing: The Eiger Sanction

This was one of those movies I'd always heard about but never actually managed to see. This is why Netflix was invented - to grant me the ability to catch up on flicks I've otherwise missed. Then I watched The Eiger Sanction and realized why I'd missed it.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it obscure but it's not on the tips of everyone's tongues when they mention classic 70's cinema. This one finds Clint Eastwood as an art professor who is a retired assassin for the US government and is pulled into "one last job" for the ripe sum of $20,000 after an American agent is killed. He's to "sanction" the assassin who did in the American agent and if he feels up to it then he'll get the chance to "sanction" a second badguy who was also involved in the hit. I started snickering right away for a number of reasons not the least of which is Eastwood's hilarious delivery of badass lines.

Eastwood is a genuinely funny man. In his heyday back in the 1970's he was the trademark for American gravitas and ball-busting, but the way he delivers venom-filled lines in either this or Dity Harry or anything else is laugh out loud funny. The Eiger Sanction is filled with gems and watching him in his prime throw out one awesome line after another is always a fun way to spend a few hours.

Unfortunately, the film was also directed by him which means it takes its time getting to where its going and once it does... not much happens. Eastwood has improved his style over the years (obviously considering his Oscar for Unforgiven) but you can tell he's still looking for his own voice in his early directorial efforts and The Eiger Sanction is no different. The crux of the movie's threat hinges on him climbing the Eiger mountain with a foreign team, one of who is the other assassin he's supposed to kill. The catch is he doesn't know which one it is and has to climb the mountain with them anyway.

That sequence winds up being the last half hour of the two-hour movie.

Up to this point, Eastwood's character is investigating who the assassin might be and training for the climb. There are a few digressions throughout and eventually he winds up on the mountain. I can respect how the real climbing was achieved, including Eastwood performing his own stunt at the end where he has to cut his own rope while dangling over a 1,000-ft drop, but the movie itself barely gets off the ground, so to speak. It just sort of ambles along and then everything is over and the credits roll.

Overall, it's more a look back at a film in the 1970s than it is a look back at a great film from a defining decade of American cinema. Also, the obsession back then with using natural lighting to make everything look "real" and "authentic" looks really awful with a weak transfer. When Eastwood, or anyone in the film, walks through a dark room the entire screen goes black until someone opens a door or window. That may have been the intended effect back in the day but it looks awful now.

Now Playing: Collateral Damage

One thing I like about Arnold Schwarzenegger movies is they're honest. You know what you're going to see right from the second it starts. Arnold is going to face a crisis, usually personal in nature, then is going to kill a ton of people before squaring off with the ultimate bad guy and killing him/her/them. Good wins out over evil. It's comfort food in a way. Sometimes you get a three course meal though in the likes of Predator or The Terminator where everything is pure cinematic perfection.

Other times you're left with an Almond Joy like Collateral Damage which is little more than a snack that leaves you hungry again 20 minutes after you finish it.

Arnold plays a firefighter named Gordie Brewer whose wife and little son are killed in a bomber's attack on the Columbian embassy in Los Angeles. He swears vengence, especially once the weak-kneed politicians in Washington decide to negotiate with the terrorists to find out what their "special needs" are. And what happens when weak-kneed politicians try to negotiate with terrorists in Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, boys and girls?

Before you have time to try and examine how many plot holes are in the first 15 minutes alone, Gordie has shipped himself down to Columbia and makes a beeline straight for the bad guy's camp. Of course, he runs into problem after problem which fortunately can all be resolved with liberal use of explosives. Apparently Gordie was on the bomb squad prior to being a firefighter, which means he can blow stuff up with the best of them then put out the fire. He's practically a Renaissance Man in that way.

Director Andrew Davis does what he can to spice things up, including a wicked shot at the beginning of the bomber walking on the other side of a barrier from Gordie's son. But the film feels entirely pedantic and workmanlike. This was clearly a paycheck flick with zero passion felt for it and it shows. Heck, even the score is ripped off from a dozen sources.

I'm a sucker for lame action flicks but the only difference between this and one of these from the 1980's is the ending. There's a slight twist towards the end that any one who has ever seen a movie will peg about 45 minutes into the film. But if this were the 1980s the ending would be totally different. Or the exact same only then the producers would get to scream, "Look! We're being edgy!"

Uh, not so much this time, hombres. Maybe someday Arnold will return to us, but if he has his way then this and Terminator 3 might be the last we'll see of our beloved Austrian Oak on the big screen for years to come. Vaya con Dios, Austrian Oak, you will be missed.

Now Playing: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Speaking as a native Texan, the Enron disaster caught us by surprise as much as the next person. One minute we're hearing stories about one of the top 10 companies in the world and how many billions it's making daily, and the next we're seeing live news shots of the corporate HQ in Houston as employees are vacating in a mad scramble. Over the next few months, story after story came out about how this multi-billion dollar corporation was nothing more than a house of cards and that CEO Jeffrey Skilling and top honcho Ken Lay had been the ones stacking the deck over the last decade. The resultant disaster was the equivalent of a tsunami hitting Wall Street, not to mention the billions in pension and retirement funds that went up in smoke overnight for thousands of people.

The investigation into where the company started and what ultimately went wrong is where Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room comes into play.

The documentary states very clearly at the start that this is a story about people and this is absolutely true. We see the beginnings of Ken Lay and get some insight into where Jeffrey Skilling first came into play. We also learn how heavily invested in Enron, and specifically Lay, the Bush family was and probably still is. It was at this point where I instinctively felt my eyebrows raising, but in keeping with it you learn plenty about everyone involved with the company. Was the Bush family involved in the collapse? Not at all. Were they complicit in earning money from the company as it essentially scammed everyone in sight? Absolutely.

But then again, the documentary carefully points out, so was literally every one else.

Enron did deals with every single major bank on the planet and if you were in the energy industry then you had to, by necessity, deal with Enron. The amount of tentacles this beast had is staggering to discover, and even more amazing is how everyone invovled suspected something was wrong right from the start. But since everyone was making record profits (their Houston-based law firm, which is currently going down in flames I might add, was paid $1 million a week at Enron's height) no one cared whether the money was blood money or not. Enron played on everyone's greed so succssfully that the resultant bankruptcy has become a textbook case.

So much so that it's now the opening chapter in corporate bankruptcy class in law schools across the country.

The film interviews everyone it can from Enron insiders, former traders, one of the former PR guys, top executives, and then talks to people outside the company. We meet a line worker who sold his retirement funds off (initially valued at north of $300,000) for around $1,200. We hear tapes of the Enron traders as they gangrape the California power grid time and again. Grey Davis gets his say as well, and I was stunned to feel sympathy for the man by the time the documentary was over. When this was going on, all I knew was that California had rolling blackouts and people were pissed at Davis and that's where the extent of my knowledge ended. I went to E3 back in 2003 and at the time there were protestors outside the Staples Center demanding everyone sign the "Recall Grey Davis" petition but that was the extent of my personal experience with the craziness engulfing the state at the time.

The documentary explains why Enron was doing this, who was doing it, and why Ken Lay had not a care in the world to stop it.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is indeed a story about people, and these are people you will come to despise. The brilliant move by the film makers is how they boil down the complexities of corporatocracy into easy to understand sound bites that don't pander to the viewer. My Fair Lady was a financial analyst for several years and a stock trader before that and she was flabbergasted that Enron managed to get away with the shenanigans they did. She understands all this stuff naturally while it normally sails over my head. But this film very carefully explains the details of what happened and why, so the viewer never feels left out in the cold.

The great tragedy of Enron though is how many people were left out in the cold on account of the insatiable greed of a few. This is a solid film with a skillfully told narrative that anyone involved in business of any kind simply must see. For the rest of us, this is a lesson in what can happen when Big Business runs amok without proper checks and balances in place. But when you consider how WorldCom and Arthur Anderson folded shortly after Enron did, it makes one wonder whether we'll be able to prevent this from happening again.

Now Playing: Cocaine Cowboys

It's funny to look back on your childhood and recognize that momentous events from your formative years are seldom among your personal memories. I have no recollection of President Ronald "Ronoldus Magnus" Reagan being shot by John Hinckly, nor do I recall the bomb that was "Ishtar" when it hit theaters. I do recall the Challenger explosion but that's because I was watching in Dr. G's third grade class in 1986, which is also why I missed both "Predator" and "Aliens" in the theater that same year.

People that lived during those years have very different memories than those of us raised during those years, and it's fascinating to examine the dynamic. Take for example the show "Miami Vice." Personally, I never was allowed to watch it because it was a cop show where the heroes were dark and the violence was serious. Naturally, I gravitated towards "Sledge Hammer" (which remains David Rasche's defining role whether he likes it or not) because it was loud, silly, and over-the-top in a fun, childish way. But one thing "Miami Vice" was centered around was the booming cocaine industry in south Florida and the influence the drug cartels had on both the state and popular culture as a whole completely escaped me.

It did not, however, escape those who survived some of the bloodiest years in an American city since Prohibition. Cocaine Cowboys dives headlong into the 1970s where everything began, and continues right up through the present. This documentary gets so many things right that it is virtually impossible to be bored by any of it. The trick behind a solid documentary is having an excellent story teller behind the scenes, but Cocaine Cowboys goes a few steps further by having excellent story tellers in front of the camera as well. For example, we immediately meet John Roberts and Mickey Munday who prove themselves fascinating to listen to even as they talk about things no sane person would ever do.

Roberts was a guy looking to get rich any way he could as fast as he could. He did some low-level dealing here and there most notably with importing pot. He brought in as much as he could as fast as he could, and eventually met up with Munday who was a redneck bush pilot. Munday came up with various smuggling routes and flew the plane into the state until there was so much pot that you couldn't give it away, much less sell it.

Then they switched to bringing in cocaine from the Columbian cartels and thus began the greatest influx of cash that Miami has ever seen, before and since. But along with the drugs came some bloodthirsty criminals looking to carve out their own piece of the city and the police were overwhelmed almost overnight. The resultant drug war makes Scarface look tame by comparison, and even though I routinely mock that horrible, horrible film I realize now that it was a parody that, if anything, didn't go far enough. Pretty much everything seen in that film had a basis in facts pulled from the streets of Miami from 1975-1980. Yeah, it was that deranged of a town and frankly I'm amazed that the place wasn't nuked from orbit just to be sure.

Cocaine Cowboys is just as energized as its subject matter, but does the viewer a service by peeling back the glossy sheen of the 1980s and examining what was really going on underneath. There are dozens of interviews with the criminals and cops involved and some of the best and worst stories come from the same source - one of the top killers in the drug wars who is interviewed behind bars. His name escapes me but he instantly proves charming and likeable, and his stories of how he grew up are great. Then he starts getting into the details of how he and others killed people and that charm remains in tact. It's then you realize the guy is practically souless (with the exception regarding his stance on children), and his stories become truly scary confessions.

This is a magnificent documentary that covers all aspects of the Miami drug wars and shows its lasting impact on the city and the culture that survived. The "where are they now" segment at the end caps everything off beautifully and the final line of text made me laugh out loud, and drew actual applause from My Fair Lady. Don't miss this one.

Now Playing: Munich

Steven Spielberg frustrates me sometimes. Last year was a banner year for him with the crowd pleaser War of the Worlds and the deeper, and more emotional Munich. I hated the first, and have just seen and loved the second. The last time he did a double feature in one year was back in 1993 with Jurassic Park and Schindler's List and I love it when he cranks things out. When he's working on a harsh deadline, he seems to rise to the challenge and he does magnificent work with Munich.

Based on the true events at the 1972 Munich Olympics in which several Palestinian terrorists working for an organization called Black September infiltrated Olympic Village and seized the Israeli dorms, capturing most of the athletes. The ensuing stand-off and confrontation when the terrorists tried to flee at the Munich Airport resulted in a bloodbath as all of the athletes and terrorists were killed. The Arab world at the time declared it a great victory.

Israel declared war, but not overtly. Instead, they sent a team of handpicked men after the targeted planners of Munich and the film chronicles their hunt.

This is brutal, stark work harkening back to the great films of the 1970s. Spielberg brilliantly recreates the world as it was right down to the innocence of the time. Munich came on the heels of a number of world changing events, and this was one of the first major attacks where terrorists were given a face and a name to everyone. The men on the hunt, though, had very specific names and faces to track down and they were relentless in their pursuit. But eventually word made it to the other side and the men found themselves as much the prey as they were the hunter.

Eric Bana make have taken a lot of guff for the overblown disaster that was Hulk but he's a sharp actor with very keen instincts. He plays the team leader, a devoted young man with a family who risks everything for the sake of national vengence. Guiding him down this slippery slope is the brilliant Geoffrey Rush who is merciless in his desire to prune what he views as nothing more than weeds. Anytime Rush shows up you know he's going to bring his A-game which is why I'm so excited about his return in the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie because his Barbossa was the best part of the first film next to Johnny Depp.

Daniel Craig continues to impress me by choosing work that completely takes him away from James Bond and I hope that Casino Royale's mammoth success means he has better and better scripts to choose from. He's solid here as the driver and he and Bana have a solid rapport with one another.

The only demerit I'd throw at Munich is a cliched technique that Spielberg obviously knows inside and out and that he, frankly, should have known better than to use here. Even high school kids today know about Munich and what happened. We don't need to flashback to it throughout the film resulting in a B-story where we want to see what happened. The finale at the airport is relentless, brutal and proof of a master film maker at work, but it would have been far more powerful if we didn't keep cutting back to Bana making love to his wife.

Even I wouldn't stoop to that as a metaphor and I'm fairly shameless in exploiting emotions.

But overall I can see why a lot of people praised it. Top to bottom it's excellent work from everyone involved.

Now Playing: The Constant Gardener

Sometimes a movie comes along and knocks the wind out of your sails. It's been a long, long time since one has done that to me (what can I say? I'm hard to surprise.) but The Constant Gardener left me floored, stunned, angry, and emotionally wrecked. In short, it kicked my teeth in and for that alone I loved it.

To say the least, the movie is an emotional drain as British assistant diplomat to Africa Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) and his activist wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz) find themselves in the middle of a conspiracy involving governments and drug companies all vying for billions in profit at the expense of the African soul. Justin is blind to the damage his employers are wrecking on millions because he considers himself a small man, incapable of helping even one person. Tessa is convinced that one person can make a difference and her goal behind the scenes is to expose as much of the corruption as possible.

The first shocker is the opening car wreck where Tessa dies. She's killed in the opening frames and after a few flashbacks where we see the abrupt courtship between Justin and Tessa, the film follows Justin's increasingly frustrated attempts to uncover what his wife was working on. One of the many beauties of this film is seeing a man who dearly loved his wife try to make good by her by continuing her work. She may have kept him in the dark for her own reasons, some obvious, some not, but it remained important work nonetheless.

As Justin's understanding of Tessa's work grows, so does his fury. He's never blinded by rage though. If anything, the further down the rabbit hole he sinks the more determined he is to see things through regardless of what it costs him. He understands that a man with nothing to lose is someone to fear, and the Powers That Be soon understand that as well.

Weisz may have won an Oscar for her role here but I'll be damned if I can understand why. She and Fiennes have perfect chemistry, but she's always been sort of a blank to me. I've heard that criticism leveled at other starlets like Jessica Biel and while that's certainly true, I will accept that Weisz is the better actress between the two. She just never goes beyond the surface here, in my opinion, but obviously I'm in the minority since she's clutching her Oscar while I'm left dreaming of mine. She's strong enough as Tessa Quayle, a woman determined to change the world while protecting her husband from its dark secrets at the same time. Whenever Tessa and Justin are on screen together you can see and feel the spark between them, even if they don't initially understand it themselves. She even tells him early on, "You'll learn me."

Justin realizes after she's gone that he failed miserably to do so. In picking up the pieces of his life, he begins to realize that hers never really fit in with his. As he plunges headlong into his pursuit of what happened a funny thing happens. He falls in love with her all over again as he begins to understand what exactly she went up against and was crushed by. Fiennes pours his heart and soul into Justin and the final sequence is heartbreaking, the closing shot and final line of dialogue in particular. Fiennes shows how closed off Justin was in the beginning, and how he is steadily reborn through the course of the film. Fiennes anchors The Constant Gardener in such a strong way that even some of the flakier aspects of the plot are easily forgiven.

This is a stunning film from director Fernando Meirelles who knocks it way out of the park. Even though the film does sometimes show off for the sake of showing off, it still feels like a passion project. It also captures the sheer anger of John Le Carre's novel as it shows just how brutal and unforgiving life is in Africa, and just how far down its nose the drug companies view the continent. It's stunning stuff by itself, but the heart and soul of the film remains the love story between Justin and Tessa and that aspect is fantastic. See this film immediately if you get the chance.

Duck Hunt - Part 2

I hadn't bothered with the alarm clock since dad is usually up at 5 a.m. anyway and I figured, rightly so, that he'd knock on the door when it was time to get up. Knock he did right at the stroke of 5:15-ish. Oddly enough, I didn't have any trouble waking up and just throwing on clothes, but I did feel somewhat out of place when I saw both dad and Brother G wearing the same camo shirts while I made do with a light green one I wore down the day before.

We sauntered out into the lodge as only we men can do and found absolutely nothing waiting for us in terms of breakfast. So Brother G and I snagged some water bottles from behind the bar, then found some stiff granola bars to munch on before the big hunt.

Mmmm, tasted like victory mixed with peanut butter.

Once we scarfed those down, our guide walked in and asked if we were all set. Guide-Me-Yonder then walked us out to his truck where we loaded up our guns, ammo, flack jackets, mortars, walkie-talkies, and some Snapple (don't ask). Once everything was ready, Guide-Me-Yonder put pedal to metal and we tore off down the winding road and headed towards the river.

It bears mentioning that it was pitch black outside underneath a cloud-covered sky and with temperatures hovering around 60 degrees. Basically the absolute worst weather possible for duck hunting.

We arrived at the river bank a short while later, then unloaded our gear from the truck and moved it over to the long raft Guide-Me-Yonder had in a trailer we'd been towing. Since it was black outside, and silly me for leaving my night vision goggles back at Casa de Skim, I'd completely missed it. Guide-Me-Yonder threw the raft on the ground, which we promptly filled with equipment, let Ol' Yeller out of her cage so she could run around, then picked up some rope at the front of the raft and wrapped it around his upper half.

At first I thought that was sort of a peculiar way to hang yourself, driving down to a river with three other guys with guns and a dog then wrapping a rope around your neck and walking away until it stranggles you, but he pulled the raft over onto the river (which I hadn't seen since it was, wait for it, pitch black) and started heading towards our spot. We followed as best we could.

Now, here's where we were - a small river in central Texas at roughly 5:45 a.m. on an overcast morning. Zero visibility except from the lone flashlight Guide-Me-Yonder was pointing out in front of him, and he was about 30 feet in front of us. We were covered head-to-toe in gear that would make a survivalist proud, and the thick black high-water boots we had on were trudging through the riverbed while the water hit us mid-thigh. Oh, and because this wasn't fun enough we carried our shotguns on our shoulders. I carried mine across both shoulders because it seemed to provide better balance, but that didn't stop or even slow the stream of profanities issuing forth from Yours Truly's otherwise clean mouth whenever I slipped.

We hiked like this for around 10 minutes which meant all of us were sweating like hogs in August by the time we reached our designated "hot spot." Looking at it from the river, I took the right flank, Brother G took the left flank, and dad took the middle. Meanwhile, Guide-Me-Yonder and Ol' Yeller set up a little ways to my left, and there we waited for the flocks to come hither. We sat there a moment in silence before Guide-Me-Yonder stood up and walked to the river where he proceeded to toss several duck lures into the black water. When he returned to his spot, we all hunkered down. We waited for roughly 45 minutes before the first hint of trouble stirred up.

We heard the echo of a few shots fired down river (to my left) and figured the birds would eventually migrate down to us. Then we heard the distant roar of something else, something that belongs on a river but not at that moment. It was an airboat firing up its engine, and the noise must have carried down stream far past our hot spot. Airboats by themselves are not something one uses when stealth is a key factor like in, say, duck hunting, where you need your enemy to pretty much be up on you without realizing it before you can get a clean shot.

Guess what went right out the window the second that fool fired up his engine? If you said "any chance of surprising anything between here and Kansas" then five points are awarded to Gryffindor. It was unreal that this fool would go out RIGHT THAT SECOND and look for his spot, which he did while right in front of us.

The roar of his engine grew and grew and grew until we saw him spin around the corner and slowly go past us. One would think he'd be in a hurry to get to his spot considering he was late, but not this clown. Oh no, he decided to take his sweet time and slowly inched his boat upstream while waving his floodlight to and fro looking for his own hot spot while we just stared at him. He must have seen us pointing our guns at him with a "YOU WILL LEAVE RIGHT THIS SECOND!!!" look on our camo-covered faces because he hurried past where we were once he recognized he was in the wrong spot. He tore down the river and eventually his engine switched off...

Only to switch back on a few moments later as he kept going.

"That fella's gonna get his ass blown off if he pulls that crap again going back in," said Guide-Me-Yonder.

"No kidding," replied my dad. "What sort of asshat comes out late in a %#$@'n airboat? It's not like the birds are deaf. Hell, they probably heard him two states over."

In short, we were already hot under the collar from the clothes, the weather, and sludging through the riverbed but now we were pissed too. At least we were armed and could start blasting at any moment so relieving stress was the least of our worries.

Guide-Me-Yonder waded out into the river and reset the faux ducks he'd dropped as lures when we first arrived, since they were now everywhere but where they should have been. Once he finished, he motioned us to reset ourselves and get ready. So we shifted our weight on our seats, rechecked our firearms, chugged some beer, smoked some weed, flipped through the available men's magazines, made smores, and basically waited like bumps on logs for the next hour.

Then we heard it.

It was soft, and at first our ears didn't pick it up. But the wind carried a slight sound upon its back and Guide-Me-Yonder whispered to us to get ready. We stared at the sky in vain trying to pick out which birds were ducks, yet all we saw were crows and more crows and maybe a plane. But that could have been a duck too.

"FIRE!"

Guide-Me-Yonder shouted at us and we three kings of army surplus looked up again and spotted two birds flying overhead. Four shotguns turned towards the sky and opened fire with a thundering cacophony.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

We emptied our guns at these nefarious foes, only to see nothing in the sky once the smoke cleared. We looked at the water below to see if their scattered remains were at least visible, but there was nothing.

Not even a feather.

It felt like that scene in Predator where Mac grabs the mini-gun and unleashes Hell on the jungle followed shortly by Dutch, Dillon, Poncho, and the remaining team who open up nine cans of whoop-ass only to hit air.

"Not a thing, not a &*$%'in trace. No blood, no bodies. We hit nothing," said Poncho.

We, too, sat in awe. Clearly, this breed of bird was far more devious than we'd been lead to believe. One minute they're flitting harmlessly about and the next... they pull a Houdini and vanish before our very eyes.

Oh, it was on.

Guide-Me-Yonder warned us to prepare for more ducks. I wondered how any of them could have heard that racket and thought it sounded like a reasonable place to relax and have a cold one. Of course, their slippery friends may have gone back and told them that right in front of us was the best place to chill because we'd hit everything but them. Clearly, the Army was mistaken in rejecting my application for sniper, though that may also have to do with listing "Pisces" under accomplishments.

We threw some more brush up in front of our position, then radioed for backup. After we were laughed off the frequency by the police, Guide-Me-Yonder decided some recon was in order. He whistled to Ol' Yeller and they headed downstream a bit to see whether Charlie was around the bend. They exchanged hand/paw signals and went in tandem down the river, only to return a few minutes later.

"They are coming..." he said.

We readied ourselves for the onslaught, and hid in our respective foxholes. The brush was pulled high and nary a foe would evade us this time. Then we heard Guide-Me-Yonder whistle. When we turned to look at him he was pointing at the stream off to his left and then we saw them.

Two birds, minding their own business, thinking they were so high and mighty as to defy us.

We cocked, locked, and were ready to rock when Guide-Me-Yonder whistled again at us. He raised his weapon and aimed at the birds, as did we all, then nodded his head at Yours Truly to take the first shot. I aimed right between them and squeezed the trigger.

BLAM!!

The scattershot hit them both square in the chest and they launched into the air.

BLAM!

The one on the right made it about six inches off the water's surface before Guide-Me-Yonder's shot brought it back down. Brother G and my dad fired as well but neither hit the second target.

BLAM!

Guide-Me-Yonder's next shot took down the fell beast and it splashed into the water followed a split second by Ol' Yeller leaping after it. Once the dog snatched up the first bird, he returned and dropped it right at our feet then headed back out for the second one.

I understand now why people who have been in combat say firefights never last as long as they do in the movies, and describe "engagements" as quick and startling. It was over before we knew it, but we were victorious...

"Heads up!" shouted Guide-Me-Yonder.

We spun around and looked straight up to see another few birds coming in, and the shotguns went up and blasted the birds out of the sky. Two more were felled by this last round, and while I suspect Guide-Me-Yonder was the one who tagged these as well it remains unclear who fired from the Grassy Knoll. There may have been additional shooters but with so much carnage it was difficult to tell friend from foe. Fortunately, we five made it out alive with our victory birds safely tucked away.

Then we heard the roar of the airboat again, and it sounded like it was coming straight at us.

Yes, again.

"Oh for the love of God..." said dad.

Sure enough, that bloody airboat came roaring around the bend and headed straight at us. It flew past us without so much as a glance and headed down river. Once it was out of sight, each of us loosened our grip on the guns. Instinctively, we'd all wanted to shoot the fool but fortunately restrained ourselves.

We agreed that it had been a fine hunt, then took a round of pictures holding up our guns and dead birds in celebration of our victory. After gathering up the decoys and throwing them back into the sled, we headed towards the spot where we came in. Since it was pitch black at the time we arrived I figured Guide-Me-Yonder's thoughts were to just head in the driection we came from and when we see our truck we'd be fine. So it was that we hiked back through the river lugging our guns, ammo, flack jackets, mortars, walkie-talkies, and what was left of the Snapple (really, don't ask).

After loading things up when we made it back to the truck, Guide-Me-Yonder and Ol' Yeller's noses perked up simultaneously. At first, I figured Charlie was hiding in the bush somewhere waiting to ambush us but since none of us was taken out by a sniper on the way up stream I figured we were safe.

"Hold it a sec," Guide-Me-Yonder said under his breath. "Gotta check somethin' I saw up stream."

He walked back to the river and waded in a few feet, then knelt and looked off in the distance for a minute. Meanwhile, we finished unloading our guns and were ready to head back to the ranch for some breakfast when Guide-Me-Yonder walked up.

"Spotted a couple a birds up the river a stretch," he drawled. "Let's hop on in and go check 'em out."

We crammed back into the truck and Guide-Me-Yonder peeled off up the hill and around the bend.

Imagine our surprise when he turned around a corner and we found ourselves watching a Motorcross track fly by on the left.

"We get roughly 500 to a thousand folk down here come March," Guide-Me-Yonder said. "People who live 'round here hate it 'cause of the traffic, but it brings in good money to the ranch."

Of all the things I didn't expect to see that day, a Motorcross track would rank pretty high on the list. I had to admit to being curious to see it when the place was hopping because it looked well laid out. I really got a close look when Guide-Me-Yonder cut a hard right and my face smacked into the window courtesy of the G-force. It didn't help that Brother G thought shoving me against the door would be funny.

His time will come. Oh yes, it will come and that right soon.

We came to a screeching halt on the other side of the course, then fled the vehicle alongside dad and Guide-Me-Yonder. Ol' Yeller stayed in the kennel as Guide-Me-Yonder motioned to us to follow him. He pointed over a hill towards some trees.

"Right on the other side of that is a path leadin' down to the river. You two head that way, and me and your dad'll head back towards the river to try and flush 'em towards ya."

Eh, why not? It worked so well in Predator, so why not in real life? That would be sarcasm, just to clarify for those in the peanut gallery.

Brother G and I loaded up then headed towards the woods. When we reached the edge we walked further in wondering what we were looking for. So long as it wasn't the Blair Witch I figured we'd be all right. Then we found what Guide-Me-Yonder initially pointed us towards.

A ravine was about three feet down and completely covered in fresh mud.

"Any bets on whether it's actually quicksand?" I asked.

"If you want to go first and get pulled under then I'm taking your birds," replied Brother G.

Ahh, brotherly love. Nothing quite like it.

We found a small path (by "small" I mean roughly the width of my thigh) down towards the river and made it to the edge. We carefully slid into the knee-deep water and looked down river where we saw a flock of ducks sitting. With weapons at the ready, we waited for the signal from the far end. And waited. And waited some more.

WHOOSH!

The flock took off and headed north which was away from us. Brother G and I looked at one another and we both shrugged. We stood there in the water for another minute before I heard dad shouting my name.

"Guess it's time to leave," I said.

We helped one another up into the ravine and back towards the truck where dad and Guide-Me-Yonder were waiting.

"Let's get back and snag some breakfast, what do you say?" asked my dad.

"Sounds like a plan," I replied.

We hopped into the truck and again were slammed into the windows as Guide-Me-Yonder debated whether the truck could actually take the Motorcross track. Happily he only made it up one hill before opting to forgo the rest. Unhappily, that meant a straight shot downhill with Guide-Me-Yonder shouting "YEEEEHAAAAWWWWW!!!" at the top of his lungs and refused to hit the brakes.

My shorts were not amused.

Eventually, we made it back to the hacienda in one piece and unloaded our gear. Walking into the building we smelled food, but couldn't peg what exactly it was.

"Welcome back, senors," said the helpful waitress in a thick Mexican accent. "Today the chef has prepared some grilled ahi tuna along with an assortment of greens and cabbage for your lunch."

We looked at each other.

"Wasn't there a place called The Skillet back up the highway?" I asked.

"You know," replied my dad as he pointed at me, "I seem to recall just such a place. Shall we head that way?"

Brother G and I were already climbing into our trucks by the time dad finished his question. After killing game and showing the world what monumental badassery the Skim family was capable of, we demanded hot food guaranteed to clog every artery in our bodies. Grilled ahi tuna?

Sorry chef, but we're hunters. Hunters don't do grilled ahi tuna.

After lunch, dad and I headed back to Big D while Brother G split off towards Cow Town. It was an excellent way to spend Friday and Saturday morning and I figured I'd get the chance to rest once I walked back through the doors of Casa de Skim. Flying past the Wal-Mart driver still stuck in the southbound traffic was kind of funny, but by this point the traffic jam had turned into an armed stand-off complete with SWAT units so humor was in the eye of the beholder.

On the plus side, a pretty cool event would happen that evening which I was completely unprepared for. Dad mentioned he'd love to do this again so we'll see what happens next season. Here's hoping the flock we scared off doesn't use the interim to plan revenge for their fallen comrades.

Duck Hunt - Part 1

A few weekends ago, my dad, brother (Brother G) and I (Yours Truly) headed south of the metroplex in search of big game. By "big game" I mean "tiny ducks that are crafty buggers" and the weather couldn't have been nicer for the last weekend of the season. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the temperature was in the mid-60's.

If you know anything about duck hunting, this is the absolute worst weather for it. In an ideal world, it would have been raining, or at least about to, the temperature would have been down in the 20s or 30s, and we'd have been hating life so much that blasting anything out of the sky would have brought instant relief.

Male bonding at its finest, ladies and gents.

Since Brother G was coming from Cow Town he was going to meet dad and Yours Truly at the ranch we were staying at. In the meantime, dad and I braved getting out of Big D alive in south-bound rush hour traffic at 3:30 p.m. on a Friday while the North Dallas Autobahn was under construction. In short, we were so monumentally screwed right from the start it was a wonder we made it through at all.

"Oh don't worry, just hop on the Tollway and you'll be fine," Mother Dearest assured us before we left. "All that construction... surely they wouldn't be doing it during rush hour!"

Ahh, but this is Big D, boys and girls, and performing large-scale construction projects on major thoroughfares at the absolute worst time imaginable is what they specialize in. It also helps that seldom does one see a construction worker actually working. For the most part, things are just blocked off thus diverting traffic into one or two lanes when six would not be enough. Meanwhile, the road crew is off getting a brew.

In short, Big D has its head up its rear end so far that when it opens it's mouth you can talk to the head resting on the tongue.

It took us roughly half an hour to cover the few miles from where we entered to the southern-most toll plaza and by the time we arrived we were thankful the guns were stowed in the back because we were ready to start blasting. When we managed to make it through that nightmare, we crossed over onto I-35E south-bound and that actually flowed for a little bit. Once we crossed over Frozen Trinity and continued south we saw a seconds-old wreck in the north-bound lane.

"Man, what is it about being with you and seeing wrecks?" dad asked me.

"Hey, at least we're not in them," I replied.

WHAM!

Just kidding.

But he was right. Usually whenever it's just the two of us driving somewhere we see a wreck as it happens at which point he whips out his cell and rings 911. It's the oddest thing too, because neither of us has an explanation for it. Sort of like Bigfoot and Roswell, and how three people unrelated to my company are standing outside my office right this second having a very loud conversation for no apparent reason. If they're trying to feel cool by discussing the latest financial market forecasts then they need a) new subject matter, and b) to recognize that financial statements are the last thing on this planet I care about. Well, that and tapioca.

Traffic flowed southbound up to a point just south of the 67 split and there we came to a dead stop... for close to an hour. When we finally were moving again we covered a matter of inches, not feet, and we could not figure out what was going on. Also, it is important to note that while I have a flash temper, it is nothing compared to the short fuse my dad has especially when it comes to ridiculous traffic congestion. He pealed off on the side road and we flew past the stacked up cars and trucks. One Wal-Mart truck driver in particular was leaning out his window waving his fists and shouting. Any normal person would have mistaken his pleasant approach as the Texan way of saying "hello," but an observant fellow like Yours Truly noted the firearm in his hand and chose not to wave back.

Actually, this is the Texan way of saying hello on the freeway, now that I think about it.

We did this for roughly another half hour, too. When we managed to get south of a small town I noticed on the road that the three available lanes funneled down to one and that the line was stacked up for several miles. Fortunately, we found a spot to get back on I-35 that was far enough south that the lanes opened back up. Dad gunned it and we raced the encroaching darkness trying to get to the ranch before sundown. The goal? Put me on the gun range and have me knock out some shooting since the last time I'd fired a gun was when I was 15.

Let's just say it's been a while.

We hit Hillsboro and hung a right then gunned it along some winding two lane road that lasted for-freaking-ever, but at this point I'd resigned myself to never leaving the road again. I figured by this point we may as well go all Mad Max on everyone we saw because weren't getting out of that truck anytime soon. At least it had butt warmers and satellite radio, though listening to Kelly Clarkson with your dad while on a road trip to kill ducks is a new experience in awkwardness that I wouldn't recommend to the faint of heart.

When we made it to the WB Ranch (no affiliation to the studio) we pulled up in front of the very large resort-style main house. I opened the door and fell out of the car since I'd been unable to feel my legs for the last half hour. Dad, of course, walked around like it was nothing and he went to check us in. He came back out a few minutes later and kicked me in the leg.

"Hey, let's get some shooting in while it's still light out. They've got a gun for you to use so let's go."

So I climbed back in the truck and Dad drove us out to the gun range which was about a minute west of the house. By this point, I'd regained enough feeling from the waist down to be able to stand on my own so we got out and Dad tossed me the shotgun. It was a very nice over/under double-barrel shotgun made in Italy, which means it fires cleanly and efficiently and doesn't have much of a kick.

For the record, the last time I'd fired anything comparable I was roughly 14 or 15 and wasn't the strongest lad on the block. As such, the rifles and shotguns I fired back then tended to hurt me far more than they probably should have. It took me a few shots to get the feel of firing a weapon again after so long, but my eyesight and instincts quickly regained their focus. Dad pulled the trap trigger and shot a clay pidgeon up into the air.

BLAM!

Tagged it with the first shot and blew it up nicely. Aww, yeah.

We stood out there for the next 20 minutes while I warmed up to shooting again and my aim was spot-on for the most part. If I wasn't blasting the targets dead-on I was at least clipping them enough to send chunks flying, so I was feeling pretty good about myself. Brother G drove up and we caravaned back to the main house where we met the other guests. Apparently this is a pretty big thing to do for people and this group were going out on a mixed-game hunt the next morning. Translation: Over the course of a day they'd be presented with a variety of animals to blast out of the sky whereas our hunt was more, uh, specialized.

The three of us drove back to the hacienda and unloaded our trucks. We each had our own room and the beds were nice and comfortable. While I wouldn't go so far as to describe them as "spacious" I would say that comfort was foremost in the designer's mind. As was "garish Western theme" but to paint a more accurate picture we must return to the main entry.

Imagine you're standing two feet away from a bison. You look it in the eyes, it stares back at you then snorts, its tail swatting the flies away from its backside. All this time you're also holding your nose with both hands because the thing smells so awful the only thing your brain has a desire for is an immediate and lengthy shower. Now take that thing's head and stick it on a wall. Now put another on the opposite wall. Add roughly a hundred variety of antlers and horns to the general decor be it chandeliers or even tables, then throw some stretched cow hide over most of the furniture and tile floors and call it a day.

Basically it's what happens when someone who used to work as a sales clerk for Western Warehouse designs a room, then throws a gourmet chef in the kitchen because the place wasn't ostentatious enough.

On the flip side, they did have a nice fireplace as well as a good chef who served up some very tasty strip steak. Outside there was a roaring fireplace surrounded by three of the biggest, widest, and deepest leather benches I've ever sat on. Correction - you don't sit on these, you lay back on them. I'm 6'1" and sitting so my back was against the rear of the bench meant my legs were pointed straight out in the air. My dad and Brother G both lit up cigars, Cubans of course, while the three of us talked and enjoyed the night air. We retired shortly thereafter and hit the sack because morning was going to be on us soon enough.

Oh, did it ever.

A Request From the Peanut Gallery

So it's been brought to my attention recently that I need to divulge with greater frequency the goings-on of My Fair Lady and Yours Truly's lives. Rest assured that when such interesting bon mots should surface they will soon appear for your viewing pleasure. Simply commenting that My Fair Lady worked late one night while I sat at home and watched TV or vice versa does not strike me as interesting enough to comment on.

Now, that being said let me assure you that additional stories will crop up from time to time but they must pique my interest enough for me to write about them. For example, anytime I do battle with My Fair Lady's German-engineered vehicle high comedy will result.

Also, it's become obvious after the cruise saga that writing out lengthy stories is far more fun for me and gives you, Dear Constant Reader, plenty of bang for your buck. The downside is whenever I'm writing one of these it tends to take all of my focus and as such the blog posts become less frequent. Apologies all around, but a large post is coming up this week.

The Dangers of Tahoe

What you are about to read is a story told to Yours Truly this morning by the Travelling Man. I have altered the screen names but otherwise this is as it happened, shocking in its immediacy...

Travelling Man: dude, i should tell you about my failed trip to Tahoe last week
Travelling Man: it's a good story
Yours Truly: do share
Yours Truly: /loves story time
Travelling Man: well children, once upon a time, Todd was trying to go skiing in Tahoe
Travelling Man: w/ 3 friends.
Travelling Man: He flew out to Reno 2 Saturdays ago... in the morning
Travelling Man: all of a sudden, a huge dust storm blew into Dallas
Travelling Man: the evil dust storm grounded all the flights... Todd's friends couldn't fly out of Dallas all day
Travelling Man: Todd was stuck in Reno and lost $60 at blackjack
Travelling Man: things were looking down
Travelling Man: The next day, the evil storm was vanquished by the heroic elf of the lower woodlands, and the 2 friends flew to Reno (1 friend bailed
Travelling Man: At that moment, a fell wind blew across Tahoe, and caused a massive winter storm
Travelling Man: The 3 travellers bought chains for the SUV and tried to make it to Tahoe, but were turned away by the vicious whipper winds
Travelling Man: Regrouping at a local Starbucks tavern, the three decided to retreat back to Dallas
Travelling Man: Todd's 2 friends each bought additional $300 plane tickets that evening to Dallas
Travelling Man: Todd couldn't get out until Tuesday
Travelling Man: But fortune was about to smile upon Todd.
Travelling Man: In Reno, Todd played a $40 stake at a blackjack table, and walked away with $120
Travelling Man: Making back the $60 he lost on the first night, Todd left Reno for Dallas with $20 of the Casino's money
Travelling Man: Todd was victorious, but the Casino vowed it would get its revenge
Travelling Man: The End.
Yours Truly: /raises hand to ask a question
Travelling Man: yes
Travelling Man: skinny kid in the front
Yours Truly: What's an enema?
Travelling Man: class dismissed

Nothing like a good story to get the day started right.