Proof positive that Karma is real

Folks who got their audio book version of President Bush's new memoir Decisions Points on Christmas were surprised to see chapter headings like "Bushit" and "Innocent Children Die" when they popped the CD into their computers on Christmas morning.

Nice going, Brainiac

The Northwest Raptor & Wildlife Center says a young bald eagle found shot in the wing is under round-the-clock care.

The center's Matthew Randazzo told the Peninsula Daily News Saturday that the eagle's wing is broken and contains bullet fragments. He says it's unlikely the bird will be able to fly.

The male bird was found floundering on the ground near Beaver, about 10 miles north of Forks. The wildlife center in Sequim and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife are seeking information about the person who shot the bird.

Shooting a bald eagle is illegal. The birds are protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

Greetings, programs! (So I've seen Tron Legacy...)

I walked out of the theater with a stupid great smile on my face; humming the ending credits music from the original.

I was pleased.

Oh, before I go on, one quick word about the music, which as one or two of you know was and is one of my favorite features of the original.

I was hoping Daft Punk would find a way to work in a line or two of melody from that Wendy Carlos' score, but if they did, I missed it (and I was listening).

However, though nowhere near as lovely Carlos' for the original, the music in the new film does works just swell. It's just unlikely to be on whatever-the-equivalent-of-my-iTunes will be in 30 years, as Carlos' is.

Now, to the film itself: Yes, the visuals are exciting, but you expect that going in; it's really the least you expect from a Tron movie (and one of the few the first one completely delivered on).

Where it surpasses its predecessor is in the characters, human and non-human, and in the performances. In the first movie, I think, few of the performers had any idea what they were doing.

It's hard to blame them. The movie was pioneering in its use of computer graphics and imagery in a way that few if any saw coming. As a result perhaps, too much of the performances have an aimless quality which tends to impede drama.

Times have changed.



It's no longer news that Jeff Bridges can act his ass off (Last Picture Show, Tron 1, The Fisher King). Bridges returns, 28 years after creating the role (has to be some kind of record), as Kevin Flynn, the protagonist of the original. He owns it.

It's Flynn grown wiser and more accepting of his obligations, both in our world and in the one he created. This grown up Flynn may not please some who expect the man-boy from the first film, but it was the right choice for this one.

As Quorra, Flynn's "apprentice" in the digital world, Olivia Wilde gives a performance that...I think I want to think about and maybe see at least one more time (before I label it). Suffice it to say that she seems awfully human for a program, but there's a reason for that.

The last scene in the movie focuses on Quorra's face. Beyond that I won't reveal the context. But Wilde made me feel. I don't mean she made me feel something emotionally (though she and the film did) in this case, I mean she made me feel what the character was feeling, the sensation. That's gotta be some kind of acting; she's more than just eye candy, though she does look good (pretty darn good).

Bruce Boxleitner also returns to his role as Alan Bradley. It's smaller than in the original, but key, and Boxleitner wears it comfortably.

Those are the good points, now to the bad. I'm going to try to put this so as to avoid spoilers, at least of a specific plot turn, but I am now going to reveal something I haven't seen in the ads, so if you want to go, go now.

The problem comes when Alan's alter-ego shows up. Something happens that I saw coming (one of a couple). It's an inviting idea. But the way in which it is executed suggested to me that it was done quickly and cheaply (presumably when someone realized the movie's called Tron and he's barely in it), rather than being a part of the story from the very beginning.


Garrett Hedlund is well-cast as Flynn's son, but it's an unremarkable part. However, he does everything the film asks of him, and it works, so I won't pick too hard. He may indeed have some game, but I'd need to see him in a better role.



The only woman other than Wilde with star billing in the film, Beau Garrett, merely is eye candy.

I have no idea if she's got any "game," simply because the film doesn't ask her to display any.


And then there's Michael Sheen. Oh dear. Camping it up to beat the band, he resembles nothing so more than Dana Carvey impersonating David Bowie on Saturday Night Live.

This choice of direction doesn't work for me, but at least the part is small and over with quickly.

As for the story, it's true that there are places where it slows to a glacial pace, and others where it is hard to fathom who is who and what's going on.

I don't care. First of all, it's like a Light Cycle only sputtering momentarily before continuing upon its merry way (Light Cycles sputter, right)

And second, compared to what the first one delivered in terms of character and story, this
one is frickin' Lord of the Rings.

I mean, watching a Light Cycle chase in 2010. Totally worth the wait.

And I can't say that about every genre sequel I've seen this year.

(Further to that aside, the headline on the Salon review of this film is "A $170 million insult." Trust me, I know what it feels like to be insulted by a film series of which you are a cult fan. It doesn't feel like this.)

End of line.

Well of course the gay lobby doesn't own the rainbow. Mork does.

An activist for a sub-group of the anti-gay group the National Organization for Marriage is speaking out against the use of the rainbow as a symbol for gay rights. "We are the real rainbow coalition. The gay lobby does not own the rainbow," she said.

South Park was right.

A couple of years ago, when Indiana Jones/Crystal Skull came out, I had a gut feeling that I shouldn't watch it, so I didn't. I didn't watch it in the theater, I didn't watch it on DVD, and I didn't watch it on premium cable.

Now that it has made its way to basic cable, however, I decided to gird my loins and sit through it, albeit with DVR remote at the ready. So now I have.

The China Probrem
Tags: SOUTH
PARKmore...

This has been a review.

I don't know about you, but I've really been getting a kick out of having Conan back on TV

And here's just the most recent of many reasons why.

I don't think I've ever been so depressed to be proven right

Me, this blog, September 24th, this year:

Honestly, I am not worried about the tea party movement. They (and their effect on the GOP) are handing Obama and the Democratic party everything they should need to hold onto or even increase their majorities in the senate and house.

What I'm worried about is that they won't grab onto those teacup-nuts and use 'em to knock down some bodies. What I am worried about is that Obama will react to a mid-term "whacking" as Clinton did.

No, not by having an affair--by all accounts President Obama is deeply and passionately in love with his wife, and devoted to his family. But by resorting to the straddle-every-issue, don't-offend-anyone strategy that Clinton embraced from (at least) 1994-1996.

Howard Fineman, HuffPo, today:

The tax-bill fight is revealing a crucial fact about President Obama's new, post-"shellacking" White House: it is increasingly being run by veterans of the Clinton era.

The significance of this staff shift is beyond the operational. The Clinton-era alums, by outlook and experience, represent a centrist, pragmatic, pro-business "wealth-creation" wing of the Democratic Party that flourished during the Clinton presidency in the 1990s.

Outside the White House per se, the president is getting key support from John Podesta, whose Center for American Progress has placed dozens of staffers in key positions inside the administration.

CAP supports the tax-cut deal, perhaps not surprising given that Podesta was once Bill Clinton's highly regarded chief of staff.

In which my love/hate relationship with Aaron Sorkin continues

Okay. You all know how good a writer I think Aaron Sorkin is, how thankful I am for his work, how much I prize my West Wing and Sports Nights DVDs. Also, I saw The Social Network this week, and thought it was the best film made from one of his scripts since The American President.

Sorkin has a piece on the Huffpo this morning attacking Sarah Palin for, in so many words, torturing and killing and slicing up animals for pleasure.

Now, lord knows I hold no brief for Sarah Palin. I think she makes Pamela Anderson look like a genius, I honestly don't get the whole "It girl" thing, and I hope that on his death bed--far away may that be--John McCain dies knowing exactly what he inflicted upon his country.

And though like Sorkin, I eat meat, I don't want animals tortured (not even John "Jigsaw" Kramer did that). So given all of the foregoing, why do I have any problem with Sorkin's new piece? Two reasons. First, this sentence:

Like 95% of the people I know, I don't have a visceral (look it up) problem eating meat or wearing a belt.

"Look it up?" Geez, Aaron, condescending much?

And second, the whole rest of the piece just isn't as well written as it could've been...or as I've seen such statements made before. For example:

Now, the trick in shooting deer is you gotta get 'em out in the open. And it's tough with deer, 'cause these are clever, cagey animals with an intuitive sense of danger. You know what you have to do to get a deer out in the open? You hold out a Twinkie.

That animal clopped up to me like we were at a party. She seemed to be pretty interested in the Twinkie, so I gave it to her. Looking back, she'd have been better off if I'd given her the damn vest. And Bob kind of screamed at me in whisper, "Move away!" The camera had been re-loaded and it looked like the day wasn't gonna be a washout after all. So I backed away, a couple of steps at a time, and closed my eyes when I heard the shot. Look, I know these are animals, and they don't play bridge and go to the prom, but you can't tell me that the little one didn't know who his mother was.

That's gotta mean something. And later, at the hospital, Bob Shoemaker was telling me about the nobility and tradition of hunting and how it related to the native American Indians. And I nodded and I said that was interesting while I was thinking about what a load of crap it was. Hunting was part of Indian culture. It was food and it was clothes and it was shelter. They sang and danced and offered prayers to the gods for a successful hunt so that they could survive just one more unimaginably brutal winter. The things they had to kill held the highest place of respect for them, and to kill for fun was a sin.

And they knew the gods wouldn't be so generous next time. What we did wasn't food and it wasn't shelter and it sure wasn't sports. It was just mean.

That speech, as if you're not already all way ahead of me, is from a television episode called "The Hungry and the Hunted," of the TV series Sports Night, and was written by...Aaron Sorkin.

Those fuckers.

Ok, I'm sorry to those of you who thought you were done seeing me rant about Saw...but it was just announced that the Saw 3D DVD will only be released in the theatrical cut on the DVD. If one were to want to see an unrated cut--which is the last hope some of us had for a Saw VII we could live with--one would have to get the Blu-Ray.

(And in my case, a Blu-Ray player.)

So, fuck them.

Saw 3D was a letter to Saw fans like me (the ones who cared about stronger writing and characterization)...a letter that was just two words long. And this is the exclaimation point.

(and to add further insult to injury, or just to add that extra dollop of cheese, they're calling it Saw: The Final Chapter on DVD.)

I feel so dirty.

Dear England: Make up the spare bedroom, we're coming back. Much love, the colonies

Tea Party Nation Founder: 'A Wise Idea' To Only Let Property Owners Vote

Judson Phillips, the founder of the group Tea Party Nation, has defended his comments that the Founding Fathers' original plan to only allow property owners to vote "makes a lot of sense" because "property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners."

Oh, those wacky Canadlians

A teacher has been suspended after she gave her Grade 8 students a sexually-explicit multiple-choice test that included questions about anal sex, lesbian encounters and penis sizes.

Several parents filed complaints after students at Andre-Laurendeau High School, on Montreal’s south shore, were asked whether or not “blacks have bigger penises” or if they agreed that “all sexual positions are comfortable.”

Two sexologists contacted by QMI were split about the value of the test.

As in so many other things, George Carlin was right

For myself, I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way. On Election Day, I stay home. Two reasons: first of all, voting is meaningless; this country was bought and paid for a long time ago. That empty shit they shuffle around and repackage every four years doesn't mean a thing.

Second, I don't vote, because I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. I know some people like to twist that around and say, "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain." But where's the logic in that? Think it through: If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they screw things up, then you're responsible for what they've done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain.

I, on the other hand, who did not vote—who, in fact, did not even leave the house on Election Day—am in no way responsible for what these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created. Which I had nothing to do with.

I think I just figured out why John McCain and Joe Lieberman are each other's BFF

They're both two-faced boobs.

Yes!

This makes me so happy, I think I am now officially over how much Saw 3D sucked. What does? This does:

Joe Rehyansky: Allow Lesbians To Serve In Order To Give 'Straight Male GIs A Fair Shot At Converting' Them

I know what you're thinking: Who is Joe Rehyansky, and how did he take his finger out of his nose long enough to type the above? I'm glad you asked, because the answer gets to the heart of just why that statement fills me with such joy. You see...

Joe Rehyansky, a former official at the Chattanooga, Tennessee [emphasis mine, natch-BV], District Attorney's office, recently penned an op-ed opposed to allowing gays in the military, in which he argued that lesbians should be allowed to serve in the armed forces, in part because it would give straight male soldiers a chance to "convert" them.

Tennessee. Nothing good comes of being there.

A wookie roar of mourning, please...

...for Irvin Kershner, who directed the single best "Star Wars" film ever: The Empire Strikes Back.It's the most entertaining, the sheerest pleasure to watch, the most inspirational, that rare sequel to improve on the original.

It's also the one George Lucas had the least to do with the filming of. I don't think that's a coincidence.

(This probably goes without saying, but as ever when talking about the original "Star Wars" trilogy, I'm talking about it before Lucas changed them.)

Get me, I'm a Wiko Source

This blog is listed as a source for something called "Wiko News."

I'd say Fox has become a parody of itself, but, what self?

FoxNation.com Reposts Anti-Obama Article From The Onion, Doesn't Mention It's A Joke

Honestly...

Just in time for Thanksgiving!

Take heart, friends. That stupid, pious hypocrite Tom Delay has been convicted.

He faces five years to life in prison.

I hear the birds singing...

By all rights, seems like this should've taken place in Tennessee

Former priest accused of trying to hire hit man

...

In a murder-for-hire case worthy of a Dan Brown novel, a Roman Catholic priest has been arrested on charges that he solicited a hit man to kill a teenager who had accused him of sexual abuse.

If you're anything at all like me...

...this will make you cheer and laugh.

Dragonboy from Dragon Boy on Vimeo.

It reminds me of Wall-E, inasmuch as it's a romantic story told without dialogue (less even than Wall-E), yet fantastically clear.

PS: I must thank Roger Ebert for putting this in his Journal.