Lisa and I get pulled over

Lisa and I were pulled over driving home tonight. The officer explained she'd pulled me over because the light over my license plate was dim . . . which roughly translated from cop-eze means "I'm pulling people over randomly because it's a Saturday night and I didn't realize you were a middle aged white guy. Move along sir, move along".

A Celebrity Opinion

Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards attended the Yankees game today. Those two should never have split up.

Rent these - or not?

Smile is an English language foreign film set in Morocco. A group of multi-national college students set out on a camping trip in the 'haunted' Atlas mountains. Among them is a journalism student whose camera is stolen; luckily she's able to replace it with an instant camera she buys at a creepy antique shop. 

Why a serious photographer would be content to replace an expensive professional camera with a cheap instant version is never explained. 

Alas, there's something funky about said camera, and one by one the people it photographs meet gruesome deaths. 

Is it a good film? No. Is it awful? No. It's pretty much stuck in 'neutral'. 

I grade it a C-

Rango is a cowboy-lizard cartoon featuring the voice of Johnny Depp. It was predictable but entertaining. The best part? The evil snake. *That* was some wicked animation. 

Grade: B

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia is a documentary that follows a West Virginia family of misfits and criminals for a year. I've heard a lot of great things about it, but I wasn't impressed. Heck, I was a little bored. Heavy drinking recreational drug users with a flair for occasional violence and a criminal record? Big deal.  I've known plenty of 'em myself. 


Grade: C

I was never a fan of Arnie's Conan, so I was expecting less than nothing from the new Conan The Barbarian. 


Well, shiver me timbers, I was wrong. Color me impressed. Oh, it's a popcorn flick of no value to society. But it's a fun waste of 'time better spent helping your fellow man'. 


One thing I still don't understand about this genre. You say there's a magic mask that brings evil into the world? Yikes. Oh, but the bad guy was killed eons ago and the mask was shattered. Whew. Wait, you saved the pieces of the mask? Why? You scattered them around the world? Ooookkkkaaay. I guess that sort of makes sense. Sorta. Kinda. Hold on, there's a prophesy saying someday the pieces will be reunited and evil will reign supreme? Ah, well in that case DESTROY THE BLEEPING PIECES. 


Still, a fun romp. 


Grade: B+

Quote

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize", (1 Corinthians 9:24).

Monkey Bars

Truth

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize", (1 Corinthians 9:24).

An Opinion

Not to get overly political here (that's what paid columns are for) but: the US Attorney General is hit with contempt of Congress proceedings because he refuses to come clean about White House connections to a scandal involving gun-running, Mexican cartels, and the death of a U.S. Border Agent - and it doesn't even crack the top headline of most sites/papers. A) could there be any clearer proof of a media bias towards Obama, even at the cost of their own integrity? B) Obama should have canned Holder months ago and distanced himself from this mess. A clumsy, pointless mistake on the President's part.

Redshirts and Half Moon Investigations

John Scalzi's Redshirts is a science fiction novel that starts out with a fun take on the old Star Trek cliche that 'extras' on the show - often garbed in security red - were doomed to die. What if these low ranking folks began to take notes, calculate the odds, and decide things needed to change?

Unfortunately, at that point Scalzi decides to go all 'meta' and have the cast become part of a fractured universe where they are mere characters in a TV show. With no alternative, they decide to venture to 'our' world to speak with the shows creators.

I'm sure it's that last bit that some people will argue 'makes' the book, but it was the opposite for me, and from that point on I was less than enamoured with the novel.

As for the three codas, the third was moving, the second moderately so, the first a ridiculous waste of time, and the whole a needless exercise.

I grade this is a B-


Book #45 of 2012

I picked up Eoin Colfer's Half Moon Investigations because YaYa left it in the van one day and I thought it looked interesting. I was right.

It's rather like Encyclopedia Brown meets The Three Investigators meets The Bloodhound Gang, and although I'm sick of pint sized protagonist (what, no chunky or tall kid can play a hero?)  I thought it was a hoot. As the highest praise of all, may I just say that I would have tore this s**t up as a kid.

Grade: A+

Book #46 on the year

Quote

Implicit understanding is an explicit failure.

Watching the Planes

Watching airplanes at Mitchell Field