October 6, 2006

• It Has Begun…

  Greetings friends, conversationalists and music lovers all across the fruited plains. I am your Xanga blogging host for life, not retiring until everyone agrees with me, not retiring because everything I say is right.

  There is so much I want to say and so little desire to sit here and be meticulous and write it. I just wished that I could think it and be done with it. As always, greetings to those of you just joining the readership.

  Well, well, well. I opened my web browser this morning and low and behold, what is the news? drax0r is getting married. (story). Congrats to ya, old boy! And may I say on behalf of everyone here that we hope you and Jess have a long, productive, happy marriage? Boy, it’s still kinda weird thinking about you being married.

  In other news, Frank sent me this link about a month or so ago and I have wanted to comment on it ever since. No, I have not done any poking around and investigating into the nature of the charge. What I do know is that just like so many times anon is that Rush is right. Let me ‘splain this to you.

  Let us assume for the moment that Ben Laydean (that’s bin Laden for those of you in the great state of West Robert C. Byrd) was killed in 2003. You are now the Secretary of Defense. What do you do? Do you go out and tell the world that Ben Laydean is dead? If you do, the terrorists release another tape “proving” that Ben Laydean is alive, if only to the drive by media. If you don’t proclaim him as dead, you get drivel from the Left claiming that you have failed accomplish your mission. The answer to this conundrum? Don’t mention him.

  This is exactly what the Bush Administration has done and rightfully so. Since shortly after our departure from Afghanistan in 2003, we’ve yet to hear a peep out of Ben Laydean. If he is still alive, he sure as hell ain’t drumming up overwhelming support, so what’s the harm in just keeping him out of the news?

  Yet we have all this hand-wringing from those on the Left that Bush has failed to accomplish the mission and that we should have already left Iraq. These are the people who are delusioned into thinking that wars really don’t exist, that Bush is Satan incarnate, the American military is the Great White Evil and that Capitalism’s objective is to screw everybody over. Q & A Time: Why should we listen to this group of people and play their mind games ultimately succumbing to them? THERE IS NO REASON IN HELL WHY WE SHOULD SUCCUMB TO THEM.

  Granted, I know that there has been news that supposedly bin Laden ultimately died of Typhoid fever. (story). Well yip yip yip yip yip yahooooo! The point is Osama is and has been irrelevant for quite sometime. He was a useful idiot that got us into the Middle East to finally clean up the mess that was started in Gulf War.

  School shootings
  Howton’s blogging arch-nemesis Dan has been reporting to us over the past couple of days about the various school shootings. While that’s all fine and dandy (pardon the pun), he (Dan) has offered no viable solution to the situation unlike these fine gentlemen were able to here. Be that as it may, I want to help you understand the situation a bit better give you a viable solution. In order to do this, we need to tackle a much larger problem.

  Let’s take this great nation as our example. Some of you may remember an event called 9/11. For those of you who don’t know what 9/11 is, you may now leave this blog. The number one question after the attack was, “How do we keep the country safe?” Some people had ideas. Others wrung their hands. Still others looked to their great savior, the government for an answer. The generally accepted idea at the time was to hire and put in place many security officers across this great nation. That sounds fine on paper I’m sure. However, let’s play a little strategy game, shall we?

  Let’s say you are the Supreme Commander (I’m using erroneous titles for dramatic purposes here) and are charged with the task of safeguarding this entire nation. Let us also assume that you and your family’s lives hang in the balance on this one, i.e. if there is another attack and there is damnage of any kind done because of said attack, you and your family die. Now then, tell me, What course of action would you take in securing this great nation?

  It is not possible to have a security officer on duty 24/7 at each stream, building, landmark and otherwise valuable piece of property across this great nation. Furthermore, even if said scenario were possible, there is no way that they could be prepared for everything. You could be attacked from the sky. You could be attacked from a missile launched from somewhere halfway across the world. How do you defend and secure everything in the nation?

  I do not ask this question glibly. But I must stoop to such a juvenile and elementary level because so many people are void of thought processing capabilities. To me, there is only one viable solution: hunt down and kill the terrorist instead of waiting around for the terrorist to come kill you. What is so difficult for the masses to understand about all of this is beyond me. This is not a pre-emptive strike. No, not only is this self-defense, it is also the proper and only sane course of action. By eliminating the troublemakers, the threat of trouble is also eliminated.

  Tell me, how much brain power did that take?

  So we have a situation, namely school shootings. How do we deal with it? We take the shooters out. Would it be possible to have enough security at every school to thwart every attempt of gunpoint hostage and mass murder? No. Some have argued arming teachers. That is an amusing thought. I would at this point remind you that it is the Second Amendment that enforces the first and armed teachers would be able to demonstrate this point much more effectively if armed, but the problem remains that the teachers are therefore potential gunmen themselves. What would make for a more immediate effect, I think would be the strict enforcement of the death penalty and making the attempting of and actual gunpoint situation a capital offense with an execution schedule of immediate. That’s right. Don’t even bother holding them in jail for twenty years. If you so much as threaten to hold up a classroom or bring a gun to school, you get the fast lane to meeting O’le Sparky. I suppose after no more then three attempts, if someone was going to hold a school up, they would shoot themselves during the attack. Now then, if teachers were also armed so that the fucker was bound to die anyway, even if it was only some of the teachers, a would be assassin would be playing roulette. The only variable in the game would be how and when he died.

  Dan, Theologian Man
  So now we come to the part of this blog entry where we talk about Dan. I just don’t get Dan. All he ever does is write a few paragraphs and then asks a question. He never advocates an opinion. He never comes out and takes a position. Rather, he just farts in the wind and too many Xangas tell him that they heard said flatulent. What I want to know is what drives Dan to write as he does on his site. I mean, what is it that makes him post ten times a day about random events and never respond publicly to comments or take a side on the issue. Unless he is a pollster and this is a quick and effective way for him to get data for his poll so he can write it and get out of the office, where is the great kick or jolly in TheTheologiansCafe? Can someone answer this for me?

  Take his Tortilla Chips post as an example:

  Imagine for a moment that you are eating at a restaurant with some friends. Imagine that this is one of those restaurants that provides tortilla chips and dip with the meal. Now imagine that you and your friends must share the same basket of tortilla chips.

  Imagine that you love your friends but you question whether their hands are clean.

  Do you eat out of the same tortilla chip basket as your friends?

  I propose the following post in response:

  Imagine for a moment that you are reading your friends’ blogs. Imagine that some of these blogs serve no purpose at all and do nothing to serve the masses other then allow for a yes or no vote on an issue that will not lead to a resolution.

  Do you continue to support and read your buddy’s blog by commenting and telling him you like his blog even though it drives you nuts?

  I suppose the only good that Dan’s site serves is it is a place for the truly insane to have their thoughts heard. For example:

  I’ve been one of the biggest advocates of getting the current administration out of office. Now I’m to the point that I’m not sure how much it matters. I’d rather leave this completely capitialistic society, and work my ass off for something else. It’s sad that capitialism requires that some fail, in order for the system to work.

  Posted by EzulyChaosGurl

  Now I’m no genius, but how does one work their ass off outside of a capitalist society for something obtainable if they are not the dictator? Liberals are so much fun to listen to sometimes.

  Look mommy, I’m learning how to kill schoolhouse assassins!

  
  ATI 100-435712 Radeon X850PRO 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 VIVO AGP 4X/8X Video Card

  I recently purchased this video card because my recent purchase of Half Life 2 wouldn’t run on the nVida GeForce 5200FX due to the fact that nVida’s drivers in the 8.x and 9.x releases are incompatible with XP. Currently, I’m stuck in the middle of Chapter 6, “We Don’t Go to Ravenholm”. Bummer. I haven’t had time to game much lately. I can say, though that this video card does native MPEG decomression and therefore color rendering. It makes you notice details in movies such as Aviator (Amazon, IMDB) that you never saw before. All in all, the card was a good buy.

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  And now a word from our sponsors
  So I went to Sidewalk. It was exhilarating and inspiring. On the way down, the weather was threatening to storm. It kinda sucked too. I would drive a patch down 565, and there would be sunshine and no rain. All the sudden rain. This was no good because it meant that I could be in cruise mode: all the windows down and the sunroof open. When I made the merge onto I-65, I felt relieved. It was rather sunny and perfect cruise weather. That is, until I got across the bridges just south of Decatur.

  It stormed and stormed and stormed. It was so bad that when I got south of Cullman, there was torrential rainfall with no visibility. Shaken, I stopped at the rest stop. When the weather cleared, I got back on the road. About a mile and a half further down the road, the northbound lanes were shut down because someone had went into the ditch in the median. Apparently the driver behind that person stopped because there was a 15-car pile up. Ironically enough, that section of I-65 got shut down by the Decatur police.

  The storms continued through Warrior into Gardendale. Gardendale is the next town south of Warrior. As I was leaving Warrior, there was a funnel cloud spotted over the town. My reason for stopping in Gardendale was there was a store similar to the former Classic Collections in Juanita that had a showcase of Department 56 merchandise. Ultimately, I decided on these pieces:

  Checking the Ship’s Manifest, Queens Port

  Elmwood House

  Will You Marry Me?

  Something tells me I will buy many more pieces soon.

  From Gardendale, I went to my aunt’s house in Irondale where I stayed the weekend. Her and her son were supposed to go to a Nickel Creek concert, but at the last moment she felt sick, so I took her ticket. Nickel Creek had a band called the Mammals open for them. I got all of their signatures on my ticket.

  

  Saturday morning was my first day at Sidewalk. In the morning I saw a group of shorts. Among those shorts was one in particular I was hyped about, MuckFuppet. Muckfuppet won the 2005 Sidewrite contest. This is a contest for short scripts that are 15 pages or less. I had read the script shortly after Sidewalk ’05. You can read it here. In fact, I almost volunteered for the project, but backed out because it was being shot in Birmingham. Boy was that a mistake. Though it was a strong script, the execution was a bit lacking. Granted, the entire eight minute production was shot on one day (which is a feat in and of itself) but they decided to go entirely hand-held with it when it would have been nice had they used a dolly and put the camera up on sticks. Nevertheless, the performances were great. If you see this film floating around somewhere, watch it.

  During the same block of shorts, I watched a film called Waiting about two elderly men who were waiting on liver transplants in the hospital. I met the actress who played the nurse. Her brother is the mayor of Birmingham and her husband was in another short film called Piece of Cake a spin-off of The 40 Year Old Virgin (Amazon, IMDB). The premise is that the virgin character is arranging the bachlor’s party of his best friend. Though the boys finally get him drunk and loose, he has a crush on the fat bride’s maid.

  After the short block, I went to a panel discussion and Q&A about the job of a producer and how to raise funds. While they didn’t say too much that I didn’t already know, they did help to focus the lens for me and get me back on track with my thinking.

  At 1800 I headed off for the Birmingham Museum of Arts for the screening of In Memorium. The production was so good that during the Q&A I asked the director if she had any DVDs for sale that night. Unfortunately she didn’t. Currently she is looking for distribution, so if you hear of this movie coming to a theater near you, get up and go watch that one too.

  Next on the agenda was the invitation only party at Sloss Furnace. I met a gentleman Drew Brown who looks like Peter Jackson. We talked for three solid hours about nothing but film. He shares the same views on how films should be made and we have the same political views as well.

  Sunday afternoon, I worked my little three hour shift at the Carver Theater. Finally, the feature I came to see was on display at the Alabama Theater, Heavens Fall starring Timothy Hutton, Bill Smitrovich, R.D. Reid and Maury Chaykin all from the Nero Wolfe series. I can not in a small space do this film justice with a petty one line review. This film will have distribution soon; go see it opening night. I got to meet and shake hands with both the director/writer, Terry Green and the starlet Azura Skye.

  The award ceremony, unbeknownst to me, was supposed to be just for the filmmakers. I kept bumping into Sidewalk co-founder Erik Jambor as well as Workplay co-founder Allen Hunter. Allen had come into the Carver while I was working to announce and moderate the Q&A session for Somebodies. I had a nice conversation with him while he was waiting for the film to end. On his way out, I called out to him, “Hey Allen, is the award ceremony open to the public?” expecting to hear a no and giving me direction to head home immediately after Heavens Fall. Instead he said, “Yeah, it’s open to the volunteers.” As soon as he was out the door, my manager came up behind me and said, “Tomas, you just got a personal invitation.” So I finished off my evening in the ‘ham with the awards ceremony.

  Words can not express the joy of the weekend. All I can say is I am going every year from now until the day I die.

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  In a Theater Near You
  The Black Dahlia was DePalma’s attempt to be remembered for something else besides Scarface (Amazon, IMDB). While visually he captured the noir style perfectly and got stellar performances out of his cast, the film ultimately is a dud. Rival noir film Hollywoodland couldn’t figure out if it wanted to tell a story in flashback or in real time and leaves an audience confused.

  I went to see All the King’s Men to see Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Mark Ruffalo. I did not go see this movie for Sean Penn. In fact, I almost didn’t go see this movie because of him. You’d think that I would have taken a hint from the fact that James Carville produced and would have therefore stayed at home. As a review and film critic, I couldn’t do that. This movie is basically a way for Sean Penn to point fingers at people in power today. His character, Willie Starks wins campaigns by calling the people of Louisiana “hicks and niggers” the entire length of the movie. Willie Starks wants to tax the wealthy oil tycoons to death so that he can give away all kinds of welfare to the poor, but he doesn’t take into account that a golden goose will refuse to lay eggs, especially if she is out of them.

  The Guardian was phenomenal. True, it’s a popcorn muncher, but still the drama between Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher is amazing. In a way, this is a retelling of Men of Honor (Amazon, IMDB). However, the dynamics are such that they are two distinct movies with two distinct messages.

  From the plot synopsis on IMDB, I thought that The Illusionist was going to be some crappy chick flick where Ed Norton tried to seduce the princess via his tricks. Rather, they are childhood friends. Eisenheim comes back to Vienna some 15 years later, now a trained magician. He uses his magic not to woo her; that he had accomplished years ago. Ultimately, he uses his skills in an attempt to help her escape her nasty soon-to-be husband, Crown Prince Leopold.

  My October picks are The Prestige, The Departed, Man of the Year will be the comic relief, Flags of our Fathers looks like it will give Saving Private Ryan a run for it’s money for putting the audience on the battlefield, Marie Antoinette will be the trick to watch to see if it will be parlor magic or something worth watching, Babel might be able to pull of a nich marketâ€â€ÂÂthat is, of course, if Syriana hasn’t driven that market from the theater. Odd man out is Catch a Fire.

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  • 8:03 am
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