The Inexcusable

Movie/TV tropes that irritate me

2011-11-04T14:54:00.000-07:00

I am big fan of movies, and watch a lot of TV. I see many, many plots and plot devices that get used over and over. Those don't bother me, for the most part; I accept that there are only so many stories that can be told, and that the art is in how you tell them.

What will irritate the bejeesus out of me is the little details.

I studied law enforcement in college, and learned a lot about crime scene investigation. I love a good mystery or police procedural show, but the way they handle crime scenes just pains me. I know that they don't have the time to show how it's actually done, but it still just irks me. It's a wonder that my wife will sit down and watch Castle with me every week, because inevitably I cringe at the way the murder scene is handled.

But the topic of today's post is (mostly) about even smaller details in movies and TV shows that drive me nuts. Here are some examples:

1. "Call me" - The awkward but lovable boy has just met the rebellious outsider chick who is new in school (and who has the body of a supermodel despite being a nerd), and they have awkward banter. She walks away, or goes to her dad's car, and says, "Call me." But she never gives him a phone number. In the next scene, Mr. Awkward is calling her, and she answers on her cell phone. Really?
This also happens with addresses - "Swing by my place at 7pm" she'll say, despite the fact that he would have no way to know where she lives.

2. "The suspect's name is Geoffrey Blomkamphisburgh" - The cop/spy/whatever has found the driver's license, passport, or scrap of paper with the suspect's name on it, and is on the phone with the trusty cohort back at the station, and gives the cohort the suspect's name, which is one or more of the following:

able to be spelled multiple ways
in a foreign language
generally difficult to spell

But, the cohort types it out perfectly (usually into the Magic Database that has Every Detail About Everyone, Everywhere). I'm not saying the show should make us sit through the hero spelling it out - it's just one of those things that momentarily damages the suspension of disbelief.

3. Doing anything that I've seen busted on Mythbusters - I mean, really...it's on TV too. There's just no excuse.

And one big one that I just can't resist complaining about:

4. The Spy Who's Been Everywhere, Done Everything, and has Mastered Every Skill - You've seen him in dozens of movies (*cough* Jason Bourne *cough*). The CIA's former top operative/assassin, he knows off the top of his head the details of the war crimes (from 2 decades ago) of the Serbian bad guy that nobody else has ever heard of; speaks perfect French, Farsi, Russian, and Tagalog (look it up); knows what the symbols of some secret society from 1200 A.D. mean and how they relate to the murderer in the story; and he can kick the asses of 10 Navy SEALs with his right hand tied to his left ankle.

There are many more, I just can't think of them right this second. Seriously, if you ever have to sit next to me through a movie or show where there's a crime scene investigation, I apologize in advance. And no, I do not watch CSI, of any flavor. I tried once, and I nearly had an aneurism.

This is your brain on grunge

2011-04-05T15:20:00.000-07:00

Apparently, it was 17 years ago today that Kurt Cobain killed himself. I wouldn't have realized if someone had not brought it up on Facebook.

You see, I hate Nirvana's music. Hate it. They were a drastically overrated waste of airplay. In my not-so-humble opinion. In fact, the day Cobain offed himself, some of my friends gathered with me and we made a toast and drank to "No new Nirvana albums."

Yeah, I'm a bastard. And then some.

Cobain's suicide also hatched a little plot amongst some my friends. At that time, I was studying Criminal Justice at my local community college, and one of our instructors was the head detective for the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office (and later would become Sheriff).

After our Homicide Investigation class wrapped up for the day, a few of us walked up to ol' Bart. He eyed us suspiciously. "What do you want?" he asked.

"Say, uh, Bart, do you have any friends in the King County homicide department?"

"Of course," Bart replied. "Why?"

"All right...hear us out. All we need is one picture from the Cobain crime scene. Picture this poster: Cobain in the chair, post-mortem, and the caption - 'This is your brain on Grunge.' Money in the bank, man. We'll cut you in."

Bart just said, "You little sickos just get to your next class."

Damn Bart and his morals. We could have made a fortune.

Obscure movies I love, pt. 6: Strange Days

2011-03-08T14:05:00.000-08:00

It's been forever since I've done an "Obscure movies I love" post. Strange Days is obscure in the sense that it was a bomb at the box office, and not many people remember it. Basically, if you weren't into all things "cyberpunk" back in the 90's, you probably don't remember this movie.

The plot is a little cheesy, and suffers from overly-speculative-future syndrome - it depicts a 1999 L.A. racked by chaos, crime, and rioting, as well as featuring at its center a technology that still hasn't come to exist over a decade later.

That technology is SQUID, a method for recording experiences so that someone else can experience them later - immersing themselves in the sight, hearing, touch, taste, and scent of the recorder. In the movie, it results in addiction for those who come to prefer living vicariously through others. The recordings are outlawed, and a black market is created. The main character is both an addict and a dealer in this black market.

The movie was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who later won a Best Director Oscar for "The Hurt Locker". You may also know some of her other movies, such as "K-19: The Widowmaker" (a.k.a. Harrison Ford's flagging career) and a little film called "Point Break".

"Strange Days" was co-written by James Cameron, who won Oscars later for "Titanic", proving that it doesn't have to be a good movie to win an Oscar. "Strange Days" also stars Ralph Fiennes, who has been nominated twice for Oscars.

I'm not going to claim this movie is good. It's a bit cheesy, and the futurism is well-dated now, but the grittiness and cool factor make for enjoyable viewing if you aren't too critical. And if you like cyberpunk.

Previously on The Inexcusable:
Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 5: Split Second
Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 4: Laurel Canyon
Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 3: the Jason Priestley double-feature
Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 2: A Shock to the System
Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 1: Diggstown

Health, Pt. 2

2011-02-10T16:59:00.000-08:00

Over 3 months ago, I wrote the post "Health" about my travails with coronary arterial disease. My wife's been giving me hell about not writing a follow-up post...so here it is.

In early November, I had angioplasty - a procedure where they insert a catheter into the femoral artery and open up a clogged artery and place a metal stent to keep it open. It was difficult and scary, but it saved my life.

Since then, I've completely changed my life. I've cut out chocolate, ice cream, and other sweets. I eat yogurt and granola for lunch. I only snack once or twice a day (about a quarter of how often I did before). We eat a healthier dinner, lower in fat and cholesterol - more fish, chicken, and turkey; less beef and pork.

I've been doing a "cardiac rehab" program at Valley Medical Center. Basically, three times a week I go exercise for an hour while they have me hooked up to a portable EKG to watch how my heart is doing. They keep upping my routine to make me progress, and there's nutrition education and such. It's really designed for people who've had heart attacks, which I didn't, but it's been very helpful to me. I'm about halfway through the 12 week program, after which I will just have to make exercise part of my routine habit. I'm working on incorporating exercise into all my other days too, because I really have to.

Since the surgery, I have lost 21 pounds. The first 12 pounds I lost in the first 12 days after the surgery, strictly by changing my diet. That means that before the surgery, I was eating 3500 calories a day too much - enough for two other people. Every day. After the 12 pounds, I stayed steady for a bit until I started exercising, then it's been a steady pound a week loss - sometimes a little more, but so far no less.

My blood pressure is down to normal, and my cholesterol is down to where my doctor wants it. Overall, I've made a lot of progress and am actually doing very well. I just have to keep it up now.

The Prostitution Incident

2011-01-13T13:32:00.000-08:00

Before you say it, no, I have not been prostituting myself. At least not in the carnal sense. I do call myself a Corporate Whore, as I will sell my content writing skills to the highest bidder, rather than do something that matters to me or is meaningful. I'm like that. But when it comes to the more traditional sense, no. Hell, I can't even give it away, let alone sell it.

I have also never hired a prostitute, and have no intention of ever doing so. In fact, living in the suburbs most of my life, my sole encounter with a real live prostitute (prior to the incident I am about to describe) is limited to once, many years ago, being stopped at a red light and having a woman make some vague offering gestures in an attempt to get me to roll down my window and discuss the matter further. I did not roll down my window, and began studiously watching the traffic light until it turned green.

Recently, however, I had a much closer encounter.

My nephew Mike and his wife Nicole were up from Texas, visiting for the holidays. Mike had organized a night out at a local casino to visit with as many of his friends as possible while he was in town. The missus and I attended, and I had a couple of drinks. A couple of drinks is all I can have anymore, due to the blood thinners I am on now. The medication combined with the fact that I was drinking on an empty stomach sent the booze right to my head, and I was a bit drunk.

I wandered off to the restroom at one point. On the way, two young women in very (very) short dresses walked by me. This was notable as it was freezing cold outside and all the other women at the casino were wearing pants. Being a man, I turned to watch them walk past.

One of the women noticed me looking, and turned around and said, "Hey, don't I know you?"
Then she motioned to her friend to come over.

I replied in the negative, and she asked if I worked there. I again replied in the negative. "Oh, you look just like one of the guys who works here, so I thought I knew you."
I shrugged. She said, "I'm Chelsea, and this [indicating her friend] is Ashley. So what are you doing tonight? You winning?"

I was drunk, so that made me chatty. "Actually, I'm just hanging out with family. My nephew's in town from Texas, so we're having a night out and visiting with friends."

"Your nephew?" Ashley asked, a perplexed look on her face. "How old is he?"

I get this reaction a lot when I speak of my nephew doing adult things like bartending, gambling, or being married. People always assume "nephew" means "child."

"He's 34," I said.

"And how old are you?"

"37," I admittedly, painfully. "My oldest sister is 18 years older than I am."

They gave an "oh, that makes sense" type of response. Then Chelsea said, "How 'bout I give you my number, and you can call me when you're done visiting? Maybe we can hang out."

I don't get hit on generally, so I figured something was up. I don't have a look that says "hot." It more says, "sits on the couch playing Xbox a lot." I believe in truth in advertising, I guess. I have been hit on many times, by attractive women, when I'm wearing a kilt - but I was wearing pants this particular evening. (An aside: many of my male friends who don't wear kilts don't believe me, but it's true. A lot of ladies love a man in a skirt.) When a young woman flirts with me, it's usually because she's looking for a sucker to buy her drinks for a while.

My response to the phone number offer was, "Yeah, well, I don't have anything to write with..."

At this point, she starts tickling my belly. I gently pushed her hand away and said "That tickles!"

"What is that?" she asks, poking at my belly button. "Your belly button?"

"Yes," I said, "but you probably hit my scar. It's from an old surgery."

"Ah," she says. "So are you staying in the hotel here?"

"No, I'm local."

Chelsea got a puzzled look on her face. "I thought you were visiting from Texas?"

"No, my nephew's visiting from Texas. I'm local."

At this point, her disinterest became visible. "Well, we're going to go get a drink. You can find my number in The Stranger." Then they walked off. (For anyone not local who's reading this, The Stranger is a local "alternative" newspaper.)

I went about my business, and what she was getting at just did not seep in. Again, in my defense, I was drunk. I returned to our group, where my nephew was testing out some silly Roullette theory he had. (The tests would later disprove his theorem.)

I told my wife, "I got hit on by a couple of young women while I was on my way to the bathroom."

"Go you, you animal," she said with a grin.

"It was weird. She said she'd give me her number, then she said her number was in The Stranger, and I'm just confused, but whatever."

My niece-in-law Nicole, who is very sweet and has led a far more innocent life than I, piped up and said, "They were probably prostitutes."

The light dawned, and pierced the cloudy haze of my drunkenness, and I knew she was right. The fact that this realization came from sweet-natured Nicole and in her Texan drawl just made the whole thing that much more surreal.

The rest of the night went on in a fun way, but was fairly uneventful. We did walk by the Ladies of the Night at one point, and I pointed them out to my wife. Her comment was, "Well, they're dressed for it."

Health

2010-10-30T10:07:00.000-07:00

For about 4 weeks now, I've had off-and-on chest pain. At first it was nothing major. It could have been many things...I have allergies that cause me to have asthmatic-like symptoms, I have reflux that has been known to present itself as chest pain, and on and on. After a week or so of it I scheduled an appointment with my doctor. The night before my appointment, I went to lay down for the night and suddenly experienced excruciating pain, far worse than I'd been dealing with previously. I sat up, but it kept getting worse, and then my left arm started to ache and got weak.

I freaked out and had my wife take me to the hospital. I'm young for a heart attack, but I'm also fat and in poor health anyway. At the hospital, there were no patients in the E.R. and I got in right away. They went into full "red alert" mode, hooking me up to an EKG, checking my vitals, drawing blood, and everything else they do for a heart attack patient.

The EKG apparently looked normal, so they did not think it was a heart attack. They figured it was my reflux, and gave me 2 different acid blockers (on top of the one I'd taken myself before bed) intravenously. I started to fell better, and the blood work came back normal, not showing any signs of a heart attack. They sent me home and told me to talk to my doctor about it, and go get a stress test done anyway to make sure it wasn't my heart.

My doctor agreed that it probably wasn't my heart, since my EKG and blood work were normal, and put me on a stronger acid blocker. He did refer me to a cardiologist to have a stress test done, just to make sure.

It was a week before I got my referral and made an appointment. I thought the pain I was feeling was probably reflux, or maybe I'd gotten an esophageal ulcer, as I'd been told I might due to my long-standing problem with reflux. The cardiologist didn't have an appointment open for over a month, so I took it, and they told me they'd put me on his cancellation list.

A few days later, the cardiologist's office called; they had a cancellation the next day. I jumped at the chance, figuring that getting my heart checked would give me piece of mind and we could move onto the next logic step, a gastroenterologist.

I went for the stress test. I talked to the cardiologist about my uncle's heart problem, which is apparently genetic and which my uncle says my grandfather and my father both had. The cardiologist said if there wasn't direct evidence that my father had this condition, then it probably wouldn't affect me.

They hooked me up to an EKG again, and then put me on a treadmill. It didn't take long before I was hurting and having trouble breathing. I kept the doctor apprised of what I was feeling, and he asked a couple of times if I could keep going, until I told him I couldn't do anymore. He slowed the treadmill to a stop.

He turned to his assistant and said, "Get him some nitro."

"This can't be good," I replied.

They had me lay down and gave me a nitroglycerin tablet to put under my tongue and dissolve. The pain went away within a few minutes. The doctor explained that the EKG was abnormal and he suspects I have a blocked artery that feeds the back of my heart. Within a week, I'd need to go to the hospital to have a catheter inserted through an artery in my groin (yay!) through which they would run some x-ray dye to find the blockage, and then probably go in with a balloon to open up the artery and then put in a stent (basically a tiny wire mesh cylinder that will keep the artery open). He wrote a prescription for nitroglycerin tablets and gave me the instructions for their use - which includes, "If you take three and the pain hasn't gone away, call 911, because you're having a heart attack."

He did say that to have this problem at my age, it probably is genetic. But I'm pretty sure being a fat bastard and eating the way I do hasn't helped things.

In six days, I go in for the angiogram (the "inserting huge needle and tube into my groin" thing) and probably angioplasty (the balloon and stent part). I'm grateful that this technology exists now, even if they do have to puncture my groin. Did I mention they are going to puncture my groin? I'm not overly happy about that part, but in the bad old days, this kind of thing meant open heart surgery and a much greater risk of death.

Obviously, after this I am going to have to make some major life changes, and they're changes I'm not looking forward to. I'm going to have to exercise regularly (which I really don't mind), change my diet radically and completely quit drinking alcohol (things I do mind).

I am very fortunate that I have the best health insurance around, and some of the best medical treatment in the world at my disposal. This is why some kind of national, public healthcare is necessary - were I not lucky enough to have awesome health insurance, I would be bankrupt after next week.

After the surgery, and completely changing my life, I should be OK and survive to see my son grow up. For that, I am increasingly grateful.

Exclusivity through Secrecy

2010-09-15T12:34:00.000-07:00

I was interviewed once for an ad of sorts for a "secret film festival" that would be running in Seattle as part of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF). I don't know if I made the cut of the ad, as I never actually attended said secret film festival - I was just picked randomly for the interview out of people at a very cool Seattle coffee shop. During the interview, I was asked why I might like to attend the secret film festival. My response was something along the lines of, "If there's something secret, something other people don't know about, I want to know about it first."

This is a common sentiment. When I said that in the interview, I was thinking of one of Will Smith's lines in Men in Black: "All right, I'm in. 'Cause there's some next level shit going on and I'm OK with that."

The theme comes up in pop culture frequently. The movie Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (which I heartily recommend, it's a very entertaining film) centers around an indie band called "Where's Fluffy?" whose appearances are kept secret until the day of the show, when clues are left around the city pointing the fans to where they will be playing that night. The book I'm reading right now, Zero History by William Gibson (my favorite author), includes an exclusive members-only hotel that doesn't look like a hotel from the outside (called simply Cabinet), and a clothing line (called Gabriel Hounds) that is only sold secretly at random places and never in a store.

When it comes to selling things, many factors create demand. Marketing, name recognition, quality, and price all have their place. One factor in creating demand is exclusivity - that nebulous factor that makes something a "status symbol". Rolls Royce, Gucci, Prada, and many other brands built a foundation on quality, but maintain their demand through exclusivity. Generally the factors to manipulate to obtain exclusivity are rarity and price.

"Where's Fluffy?" and Gabriel Hounds, while fictional, show another way to obtain the exclusivity factor: secrecy.

We all want to be "in on it," whatever it is. We want to be in the know, in the club, on the inside. This is where phrases like "Knowledge is power" and "Information is currency" come from.

Technology has lent itself to this kind of marketing. Viral marketing is part of it. "Social media" like Twitter and Facebook are ideal for this sort of thing. Yet they also limit the length of the secrecy, and thereby the lifespan of the exclusivity and demand. Any brand that uses secrecy to generate exclusivity is going to have an expiration date. Contrary to normal marketing, when your "secret brand" gets name recognition, it will be dead. If you're going to start along those lines, while you're building your secret brand you better be starting the idea for your next one, so you can kill off the first one when it loses its cache, and just move along to the next thing. Marketing as evolution.

I'm not creating any new ideas here, just pointing out the trends and ideas I see. The real marketing wogs on the cutting edge have already thought of this, are already ahead of the curve. If they hadn't, it wouldn't be appearing in books and movies.

And it wouldn't have been published in Business Week 5 years ago. That article doesn't deal with a "secret brand" in the same sense as Gabriel Hounds, but it is in the same ballpark. Perhaps the brands in that article are the progenitors of the "secret brand" as it is coming to exist today...5 years is a long time for evolution in the online world.

But for now, it works and it's still relatively new. The question is: who is creative enough to take advantage of it? And how?

What is this Burning Man thing?

2010-08-17T00:19:00.000-07:00

Two weeks from now I will be enjoying my first night at Burning Man 2010.

Over the years, I've been asked by many friends and acquaintances, "What is this Burning Man thing?"
It's a hard question to answer. My usual reply is, "It's hard to explain." Then I tackle any more specific questions they have about it.

Sometimes I give the short answer, "It's an art festival in the Nevada desert."
Which is true. It's a festival, people do come and make, build, perform, and otherwise create art. But that doesn't even begin to cover it.

It transcends attempts to explain. "Is it like Woodstock?" No, people tell you that because they heard there are a bunch of naked hippies there. Which is true - there are naked hippies, but there are also ravers, pyros, bikers, goths, steampunks, yuppies, frat boys, rednecks, nerds, and every other subculture you can think of; all in various states of dress or undress - although, on the whole, the steampunks tend to wear more clothes.

And there is music. But it isn't big-name bands taking a central stage (or stages, like Lolapalooza or Coachella). There is no single organized event to take your attention on any given day. Burners (as those who are wont to go to Burning Man usually call themselves) come, and many organize themselves into "theme camps" that create an interactive experience of some sort for their fellow Burners. I've been in a camp that built a lighthouse and played techno music for people to dance to. Friends organized a camp that served high tea every day. One camp paired you up with a "soul mate" in order to force people to meet strangers and make new friends. The variations are endless, and there are literally thousands of theme camps offering many different experiences.

You have to buy a ticket, but all that does is get you in the gate and pay for the port-o-potties you use. The experience is all designed and provided by you and your fellow Burners. The organization just sets up the infrastructure of the event (no mean feat) and puts on the one central event - the burning of the Man (a 40 ft. tall statue) at the end of the week.

"Is it some kind of survivalist thing?" I hear some people ask. No, you hear this because some people refer to it as "survival camping." The environment is harsh, and you must bring everything you need to survive a week in the desert - shelter, food, water, everything. But it's not a bunch of crazy end-of-the-worlders or anything like that. And guns aren't allowed - but they used to be.

So what is it? It's a life-changing experience. It's a big party. It's camping. It's art. It's music. It's whatever you want it to be.

When I first heard about it, it sounded like some crazed drugged-out thing that I had no interest in. But as my life changed, I decided that a crazed week in the desert was exactly what I needed, and I was right.

What I found there was a community. People who were genuinely nice (for the most part - there are still assholes around, no matter where you go) and just wanted to have a good time, and wanted everyone else to have a good time. It defied all the explanations I had been given. It was everything I had heard, and much more that couldn't be in put into words. That's why it's so hard to define - there are a million aspects to it, and if you go you see so much more than you were ever told about it. Even if you've been around somebody like me who's been many times and talks about it incessantly.

I also found a new family. People I call my brothers and sisters, and whom I love and care about very much. And every new Burn added new members to the family. And every one of those people changed my life in some way.

I've been to Burning Man 9 times now. 1997-2004, and then again in 2008. And I'll be at my 10th in just two weeks. And probably anyone who knows me has heard more about it than they ever would have cared to. Except my fellow dedicated Burners, since they talk about it as much as I do.

Before I went to Burning Man for the first time, my friend Gromit (who had been to Burning Man in 1996) told me, "When Burning Man '96 ended, there were people whose whole lives became about Burning Man '97."
I could not fathom a "festival" that would consume my life like that. I thought it was extreme.

When Burning Man '97 ended, my whole life became about Burning Man '98.

Schrodinger's co-worker

2010-07-26T23:35:00.000-07:00

For the past week and a half, I've been going into the office on a daily basis. I haven't been doing that since I started working from home back in December. Many things are the same after 8 months of me rarely being there, but a few things have changed.

Naturally, there are people in the office I haven't met or seen before. There's one guy in particular who I only ever see in the break room when I go to get coffee. He seems to enjoy lounging around the break room, whereas I am in and out like a Delta Force team whose sole mission is to extract a cup of coffee.

As I say, I only see him in the break room. I've never walked past a cube or office and seen him. And it seems like he's there every time I'm in the break room.

One can't help but wonder: is he always in the break room? Does he just spend his whole workday there?

Surely not. But it's strange....like Schrodinger's cat, I only know this guy is at work when I look in the break room. Does he exist when I'm not in the break room?

This led to a more disturbing thought...for him, I'm the guy he only sees when I come in to get a cup of coffee. In his observable reality, I only exist when I'm standing in front of that huge silver Starbuck's machine.

The thought is dizzying and alters my perception of reality. If I dwell on it too much, my nose starts bleeding and I wake up on the floor 42 minutes later.

Usually with no pants on, which I can't figure out either.

Shooting on location

2010-07-05T09:07:00.000-07:00

I love watching TV shows and movies set in Seattle. Not because I love Seattle so much (although I do love it), but because of the inconsistencies that always crop up. For instance, the view of the Space Needle that Fraisier had from his apartment was impossible. I'm sure this kind of thing happens in every show set any place it's not actually filmed, but Seattle is the one I know and where I can spot the errors.

This weekend, I was watching some recent episodes of In Plain Sight, partly because it features a number of cast members of my favorite show ever, West Wing (Mary McCormack, how I love thee).

In Plain Sight is set in Albuquerque. The episode that made me think about all this, however, started in Seattle.

In the opening scene, a homeless man (who turns out to be a genius and homeless by choice, as are all our homeless in Seattle, I'm sure) wakes up in a basement room where he's been crashing and walks out of the basement of a low stucco building (something you'll never see in Seattle anyway), and then walks past a sign that says "Pioneer Square Library" which made me laugh heartily. For those of you not from Seattle, Pioneer Square is a neighborhood made up almost completely of bars and restaurants. There's no library. The most educational thing in Pioneer Square is the Underground Tour, which I recommend to tourists and locals alike.

The homeless genius then walks what appears to be about a block to some small urban park, where he discovers a bomb while looking through some trash. He runs to a pay phone (almost non-existent downtown) and calls 911, reporting a bomb in "Westlake Plaza". I start laughing harder. Whoever wrote this episode has clearly never been to Seattle and just pulled a couple of place names off of Google or Wikipedia. Westlake (again, for those not local) is a shopping mall downtown. There's no park, and if there is a "Plaza" it's concrete.

Then, there's a wide shot of Seattle, showing (as every show set in Seattle must) the Space Needle - with the Kingdome in the background. The Kingdome. Which was demolished a decade ago.

What about things shot on location? Surely they would contain fewer errors, right? Ha. I saw or drove past the filming of at least three of the scenes in the movie Assassins, back in the day. When we went to see it, I got a good laugh out of their creative editing. The opening scene, taking place in a graveyard, was shot in the suburb of Everett, about 30 miles from Seattle. In the scene, they pull onto the freeway and a minute later are suddenly in downtown Seattle. I wish my drive to and from Everett went that fast! Later, the heroes are in an alley that I know was just off Union Street, and when they pull out they are on Olive Street 3 blocks away. But the one in Assassins that made me laugh the most was when Sly Stallone jumps from the monorail onto the roof of a building on Fifth Avenue, and climbs down from the roof of the Hurricane Cafe a few blocks away. And for some reason there are some vicious guard dogs out back of the cafe. Awesome.

Whether it's filmed on a set or on-location, remember: the locals are always going to laugh at you.

the Green Machine

2010-06-02T18:13:00.001-07:00

Rat City Rollergirls

2010-04-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

Ever since my wife saw Whip It (which is a great movie and you should watch it too), she's been obsessed with rollerderby. So for our anniversary this year (19 years together, and 4 years of marriage), I bought tickets to the Rat City Rollergirls derby this past Saturday.

I have to say, it was pretty awesome. It helped more than a little that one of my Seattle Steamrat friends held seats for us, and boy were they great seats. We were close down to the floor and had a great view. Even ignoring that, rollerderby, it turns out, is just a hell of a lot of fun.

There were two "bouts" (matches). We missed most of the first one due to a) our son having soccer practice that ended exactly when rollerderby started, and b) spending half an hour in line at Key Arena to get some drinks and munchies.

This really was OK, as the first bout was a total run away...the winning team had somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 points over the losing team. (To understand the scoring if you've never been to a rollerderby bout, you can click here, or the better option is to watch the aforementioned movie Whip It). The second bout, on the other hand, was incredibly close and came down to one point scored at literally the last minute.

However, I have now created a monster. The missus is already talking "season tickets" for Rat City's next season, and/or practicing her rollerskating and getting into rollerderby herself.

Post-Troll slurpees, a tradition

2010-04-09T21:10:00.001-07:00

Chas and the Troll

2010-04-09T20:43:00.001-07:00

Chas asks: can I climb on it?

Erik "Tex" Wilson

2010-04-03T19:54:00.001-07:00

Erik's going away party

2010-03-27T13:11:00.001-07:00

Papa likey

2010-03-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

This is the Iconoclast by Ecosse Moto Works, makers of insanely expensive motorcycles. I could never afford this bike, and even if I could I don't think I'd ride one - 0-60 in 2.8 seconds just sounds like a rocketsled to the morgue for me - but it is incredibly beautiful. I do admire it.

March birthday overload

2010-03-14T15:21:00.001-07:00

March. For me, a month full of birthdays, and one anniversary.

March 10 is my brother-in-law's birthday, and my niece's (well, niece-in-law, I guess, as she's married to my nephew).

March 11, my son's birthday.

March 13, my wife's birthday, and that of our friend Eric.

March 15, our friend Frank.

March 16, our anniversary.

March 22, my friends' daughter, who I count as a niece, basically. And apparently also my son's new best friend.

March 25, another friend Erik.

And I'm pretty sure there are a few more I've forgotten.

So, in the span of 6 days, I was at 4 birthday parties. 3 in one weekend.

I need a weekend to recover from my weekend.

I took this picture to embarrass my niece (not the one whose birthday was on the 10th):

...and I know that I'm right, cause I hear it in the night...

2010-02-16T14:43:00.000-08:00

In the sidebar, under "Blogs - People I haven't actually met", you'll see there's a new one called "Sleep Talkin' Man". This is one I found via Boing Boing today, where a woman records and transcribes the crazy-ass things her husband says in his sleep. Give it a read, it's hilarious. "Badgertastic" is my new favorite word, even though I can't imagine in what context I would use it.

I can relate a little bit to her being woken up by the sleep-talk. When we were much younger, my wife would sometimes talk in her sleep. Back then I was a light sleeper, so it would always wake me up and I would get to tell her in the morning what she said in her sleep.

I haven't heard her talk in her sleep in years, but that could be either because she doesn't do it anymore, or because I sleep like the dead and could probably snooze through a full-scale battle.

My wife's sleep-talking wasn't nearly as funny as this British fellow's, though. She always - always - talked about work in her sleep. This was particularly annoying when we worked together in a bakery. She would wake me up twelve hours after our work day was done, saying something like "I forgot to put salt in the focaccia dough!" (seriously, who says "focaccia" in their sleep?) to which I (thinking she was awake) would say "Well, it's a little late now, isn't it?" which would only be met by snoring. I would then realize that I had been woken out of a dead sleep to attempt a conversation with a completely asleep and half-crazy baker. I would eventually get back to sleep, but usually not before she'd say something like, "The ciabatta's too dense!"

Anyway, give Sleep Talkin' Man a read. You'll like it.

- Mattbear out.

It's a dirty job

2010-01-07T04:16:00.000-08:00

...but somebody's got to do it.

It's 3:30am, and I'm awake thanks to another coughing fit, a problem I'll be seeing the doctor about (again) in roughly 12 hours. While I wait for the most recent dose of cough medicine to kick in, I thought I'd knock out this post that's been kicking around my brain.

My son has recently become obsessed with the Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs. This really started even before he'd ever seen the show, because he thought it was hilarious when the host, Mike Rowe, would say "I can smell it now" on the commercials. Dirty Jobs hasn't transplanted Mythbusters as his favorite show, but he has insisted that I record it on the DVR and that he get to watch it as much as possible. I have to say, it's grown on me too.

I've done my fair share of dirty jobs. I worked fast food (my first job, cooking at KFC, was particularly nasty), worked in the "clean and paint" shop of an airplane repair station, been a janitor at a kid's play gym, and plenty more.

When I watch Dirty Jobs, I inevitably ask myself, "How do they stand to do that?"
Really, I know the answer. They slap on some gloves and tell themselves, "There's work to be done." It's that simple. When you do a job that's physical and dirty, day in and day out, it's just life. You just do it, and you earn a few bucks cleaning up messes that would make more gentrified folks sick.

With my current gig, the dirtiest thing I have to do is maybe clean out my keyboard (although I really ought to have a hazmat team for that, too). When I watch that show, I have to think back to days when I had to clean stagnant chicken blood out of a 15 foot trough, slog through a muddy construction site in the rain toting heavy steel doors, or cram myself into the underfloor of a 727 with a bucket of cancer-causing methyl-ethyl keytone to clean up the grime. (An aside for the ladies: ever go to buy nail polisher remover and grab the "non-acetone" stuff thinking it's healthier? It's not. It just substitutes MEK for the acetone, and MEK will give you liver cancer. You're better off to skip painting your nails. And trust me, modern men really don't care whether you paint your nails or not.)

There are some benefits to doing physical labor, as long as you do it right and don't have a job that will outright break or kill you. Before the Evil Empire gave me a desk job, I was a delivery driver for a meat company. My job involved slinging around 80 pound boxes of meat all day and jumping in and out of the back of my truck. I got myself down to 200 pounds then. While no means svelte, it was the best condition I've been in since high school. Once I turned into a keyboard cowboy, I put on 50 pounds in 6 months. It's gotten worse since.

Sometimes I think I'd like to go back to doing an honest, physical job. I'd like to have something tangible to point to at the end of the day to say "I accomplished something today." I'd like to be able to explain my job in a simple sentence ("I'm a welder") instead of the verbal dance I have to do now ("So, when you call in for tech support, before you talk to the guy who will actually help you, you have to talk to a CSR who gets all your information and charges you money and then transfers you somewhere - I write the stuff that tells that CSR how to do his job"). But then I realize that if I had "real" work to do, I'd have to actually get dressed every day, and wouldn't be able to play Halo or sit in my hottub on my lunch break. And I wouldn't get paid as well as I do for being a Corporate Whore (tm). So for some reason, I just keep doing what I'm doing.

A couple of times while watching Dirty Jobs, I've caught myself telling my son something like, "That's what you end up doing if you don't get an education." I try not to, and I feel guilty when I do. I remember my parents (who didn't go to college) telling me similar things, and I remember what little impact it had on me. And those people don't deserve to be put down for what they do. Their jobs make life easier for everyone else, and there's nothing wrong with a day's honest labor. If you know how to live within your means, how much you earn isn't nearly as critical. I worried less about money when I was a delivery driver for a bakery and earning less than one-third what I do now, than I do now with all my debts and bills and such.

I want to strike a balance between instilling in my son the need for a good education (which I do think is important) and teaching him a good work ethic, which has to include room for physical - even dirty - labor. It's a balance that's hard to strike, and became even more complicated for me recently after seeing this great TED talk given by Mike Rowe, which I suggest you watch now:

Misadventures and Twilight

2009-11-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

Today, the morning radio show I listen to was interviewing a couple of the actors from the upcoming movie Twilight: New Moon. This brought me around to the idea that I ought to write down this story of my misadventures with the first movie, Twilight.

A confession: when the real serious craze around the books started, I decided to read them just to see what all the fuss was about. My wife had them sitting around the house, so what the hell.

And what I found was that while the writing is truly horrible, and yes featured shiny disco vampires, there was a certain truth about high school life captured in them - the sense of school as a microcosm, the all-encompassing importance of your first love, etc. I've made it through the first three books, and attempted to tackle the fourth but it was just too awful.

So anyway, the first movie came out, and my wife Jen and our friend Loxie wanted to go see the very first showing, at midnight of opening "day." Sure, what the hell, I thought. I liked the book ok, and Kristen Stewart is hot in a makes-me-feel-like-a-dirty-old-pervert sort of way.

We waited in the long line with our Fandango'd tickets. When we got in, Jen and Loxie said, "Go save us some seats, we'll get snacks and stuff." Yeah, great idea.

I walked into the theater, which was already mostly full. I expected lots of teenage girls to be there, but it was overwhelming. There were maybe - I say, maybe - four other men in the whole theater, all sitting with wives and/or teenage daughters. There were perhaps three or four teenage boys there, and all seemed to be with a girlfriend. The rest? All female, and only about 1 in 8 of those was an adult.

I walked in, a grown man, with no female accompaniment. No daughter, no wife, nothing.

Everyone was watching me. It was like they were waiting for me to attempt to kidnap and/or molest some girl, right there in the theater.

I found three seats together. Slowly and calmly I sat down in the middle of the three and put my hat in the seat on the left and my coat in the seat on my right, trying to make it as obvious as possible that yes, there were other people with me and I was just saving seats for the ladies who would be along shortly.

This accomplished nothing. Girls were still turning around and glaring at me while, I suspect, gripping the pepper spray in their purses that their fathers gave them. Mothers walked their daughters to the only remaining seats, way in the front, and on seeing me sitting there widened their eyes considerably.

I was getting paranoid. I was sure some mother had already dialed 9-1 on her phone and was just waiting for me to ask a little girl if she'd like some candy. I felt like at any moment I was going to be arrested and charged with "Watching Twilight without a teenage daughter," a Class A felony for sure, and have to register as a sex offender for the rest of my life.

I thought maybe I should be looking for Chris Hansen to pop out.

Finally, the women showed up and took their seats. I still got some evil glares.

Sitting through the movie was weird too, as every time "Edward" or "Jacob" would appear, there would just be this collective sigh accompanied by some squealing. However, it was a welcome relief from being stared at like I was Freddy fucking Kruger.

When the ordeal was over I explained to Jen and Loxie about the pre-movie freakiness. They laughed heartily, and promised that we would do it again when New Moon came out. Awesome.

New Moon is about to come out. Loxie is going to be away in New York visiting family, but Jen says she's going to make me go anyway. She's the boss, so I guess I'm doomed to it.

Someone please call up "To Catch a Predator" and let them know I'm harmless. Please?

SteamCon 2009

2009-10-28T21:55:00.000-07:00

This past week I took Friday off from work to attend SteamCon, the cleverly-named Steampunk convention here in Seattle. It was the first iteration of this convention, and succeeded well enough that the organizers have already started selling passes for SteamCon 2010. And yes, I already have one for next year.

Friday off meant I had a chance to do something I rarely get to do...have lunch at Salumi, one of my two favorite restaurants in Seattle (the other being Morton's). Salumi is owned and run by Armandino Batali, a retired Boeing engineer and father of my chef-hero, Mario Batali. After retiring from Boeing, Armandino spent a few years touring Italy and learning to cure meats in traditional Italian fashion. Then he opened up this wonderful little restaurant where he makes his own cured meats and serves them up as sandwiches with delicious soups on the side. Sadly, Salumi is only open Tuesday through Friday during the day. Since I work banker's hours, it is rare that I get to go. I had the salumi sandwich, basically just straight up salami, and shared a bowl of the wonderful black bean soup they were serving that day. Lunch:

After that, it was off to SteamCon to get our badges and such. We spent some time (and some money) in the Vendor's Market, where Jen got a very cute hat and some suspenders to help steampunk-ify her look. Didn't get to spend too much time at the Con Friday as we had something to go to at the boy's school, but did hang out with good ol' Travis:

And I also got to meet (albeit very briefly) one of my favorite steampunk "makers," Jake Von Slatt. Poor bastard was pretty jet-lagged and tired from travel, so I tried not to bother him for too long - just a quick handshake and a "love your work." Unfortunately, in my attempt to not be too annoying, I completely ignored the beautiful Libby Bulloff, with whom Von Slatt was sitting down for a drink. I was unintentionally rude to her, and felt bad about it afterward.

Saturday, back to the Con. Hung out with Charley during the day - he couldn't get a pass to the Con, but he hung out anyway. The kids (mine and Charley's) were pretty mental and out of control, but wehad some fun anyway.

Sat in on one panel, the talk by Tim Powers, author of (among other things) The Anubis Gates. He was very smart, engaging, and amusing. I asked him a couple of questions, which he answered intelligently. There was one confession I couldn't make to him, though - I've never actually read any of his books. I have a copy of The Anubis Gates, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Still, it was awesome to listen to a smart novelist talk about writing.

It was the only panel I actually made it to in the whole Con. Oh well. I was mostly too busy just hanging out with the other Steampunks and checking out costumes. And of course hanging out with SteamRats -

The amazing artist Molly, a.k.a. Porkshanks:

Beth (a.k.a. Befu) and Eliana:

Guy (middle) and more:

I also sat in on the tag end of the performance by Robert Rial's Bakelite 78, an old-timey jazzy kind of band, who were very good. These lovely young ladies were dancing to Robert's tunes:

After that, went to dinner with the missus, the boy, Travis, his girl Terri, and friends Cat and Michael:

We went to a hibachi restaurant recommended by Travis and Terri. It was good stuff.

Then back to the Con for the concert of Unwoman, Vernian Process, and Abney Park. Unwoman was talented but not my kind of thing. Vernian Process was very loud and sounded like a cross between Depeche Mode and the music of Nightmare Before Christmas.

While the first couple of acts were going, I shook hands with and talked to Nathaniel Johnstone, guitarist/violinist for Abney Park, and discussed our shared roots in the Scottish clan Johnstone. When I went up to him, he was with the afore-mentioned Libby Bulloff. I had wanted to apologize to her for being unintentionally rude before, but I hesitated and she walked off before I was done talking to Nathan. Now she probably thinks I'm a jerk, which of course isn't far from the truth, but in this case I actually was trying not to be a jerk.

The truth? I have trouble getting up the nerve to say hello to her in the first place because I find her to be intimidatingly beautiful. I'm such a nerd.

I've seen Abney Park live once before, and they do put on a pretty good show. I enjoyed seeing them again.

Not ready to sleep after the concert, it was up to a hotel room with some of the SteamRats to hang out for awhile, which was one of the more enjoyable parts of the Con for me, actually. Once they started getting sleepy, I headed off to my own hotel room and conked out.

Along the way, I also got to briefly meet a few folks from the Brass Goggles forum that I have frequented for some time. Didn't get nearly as many pictures as I wanted. Oh well.

All in all, I had a great time and am looking forward to next year's Con.

Quick post of amusing things

2009-10-09T18:19:00.000-07:00

Things I've found amusing lately:

Shhh Don't Tell Steve: college-age guy tweeting (I hate saying that) about his loser roommate's life without the knowledge of said roommate.

I'm dead and it's all my fault: Doug blogs the last words of his foolhardy friend, daily. Hard to explain, easy to laugh at.

How many people are in space right now?: Pretty self explanatory, and pretty awesome.

Wednesday Wacko - Rogue helicopter pilots!

2009-09-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

This guy has to be seen to be believed. Watch to the end, that's where the real payoff is.

And then, there are things you just shouldn't do

2009-08-21T09:49:00.000-07:00

Let's say you're doing something that is really fun, but you know would get you in trouble if you were caught. Like fired from your job, or go to jail trouble. What you definitely should not do is take pictures or video of it.

This lesson was recently learned by a cop in Texas (and three of his fellow officers) when he had a hot waitress pose on his patrol car, holding his rifle. That's not a euphemism, but I'm guessing he was hoping it would become one.

Now, I have to admit, I like this photo:

But really, was it worth his job? Possibly his career? Because that's what he stands to lose.

If you're up to no good, enjoy it, but put away the camera.

There are things you just can't do, part 2

2009-08-20T14:56:00.000-07:00

I've written before that there are just some things you can't do.

I have another to add to the list. You see, earlier this week I was at the pet store, and I saw this huuuuge tattooed biker-looking guy walking to his huuuuge truck, looking all tough and super-butch, except...he was carrying bags from Trader Joe's next door. You just cannot look tough and manly shopping at Trader Joe's.

"Wooo, tough guy, you going to dip some chips in some tahini? Maybe some organic hummus?"

It just can't be done. And the same can be said for PCC or Whole Foods.

Movie Review: District 9

2009-08-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

Two movies in two nights. Crazy.

So last night we went to the midnight showing of District 9.

My thoughts: it was awesome.

This isn't some cheesed-up alien movie. The film is actually quite thoughtful and pretty heavy. It will make you uncomfortable, and that's a good thing. I've read some criticism that the story did not explain the aliens well enough, and that is valid. But I didn't feel it was a cop-out like some reviewers felt. The reasons behind the aliens' unwillingness or inability to rise above their slum conditions and integrate with society are hinted at, but not broadly explained. If you aren't paying attention to the more subtle themes, you might not catch it.

It's easy, though, to miss the more subtle elements, as director Neill Blomkamp (whom I've written about before) fills his first feature-length film with intense visuals and action. Parts of the movie borders on overwhelming, but that worked for me.

The main (human) character in the movie is portrayed very well as a flawed, vulnerable human, which makes the movie both harder and easier to watch.

For the squeamish, I do warn that there are some gross-out scenes (the missus, definitely squeamish, said there were "about five shots that weren't gross-out"). Also there is a fair amount of "shaky-cam" action going on, so sit back a little further from the screen if you get motion sickness and don't want to taste your popcorn twice.

All in all, loved it, and heartily recommend it.

Chick Flick Night movie review

2009-08-13T14:03:00.000-07:00

Last night after work, the missus declared her desire to go to the theater to view a film. Upon asking which film, I was told "Julie & Julia".

Now, I had already stated my willingness to go see this blatant chick flick because it looked amusing and endearing.

I know I lost manpoints for merely typing that last sentence, so I shall press on and tell you that it really was an ok movie. It was definitely not bad, and I enjoyed it.

I enjoyed it partly because it was about, on some level, cooking and food, two subjects near and dear to my fat, cholesterol-clogged heart. Mostly, though, the movie was really made by Meryl Streep playing Julia Child, and to a lesser degree Stanley Tucci playing her husband Paul.

The movie bounces back and forth between two stories: on the one hand, it tells the story of Julia Child living in France in the 1950s and learning to cook at the Cordon Bleu academy and writing the book that made her famous, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. This part of the movie is based on Child's book, My Life in France. On the other hand, it tells the story of Julie Powell, a cube-farm-dwelling 30-year-old in 2002, who blogged her experience cooking her way through all of the recipes in the aforementioned Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

While Amy Adams (who plays Julie Powell) is cute and her half of the movie gives modern audiences something to relate to, the film belongs to Streep and her portrayal of Child. This is unavoidable, though, as you have Streep - an experienced and indisputable master of her craft - compared with Adams, a much younger and less experienced Hollywood "cute" actress. And this parallels the roles they play - Child, a brilliant chef who changed the face of American cooking, versus Powell, a blogger who got a book deal during the blog-to-book-deal craze that swept up this guy but inexplicably missed me and the other authors of the awesomest blog ever, Billy Ocean, Student Council Treasurer.

What it boils down to is that I could have watched a whole movie of Streep playing Child; the same could not be said of Adams playing Powell. The "modern" half of the movie doesn't detract from the film, but it doesn't add anything either.

But guys, if your woman wants you to go see this, it won't be unbearable. Go, make her happy. And hopefully you're like me and have a woman who is also a sci-fi buff and really wants to go see District 9 as well.

(Also, if you're looking forward to District 9, but haven't seen the director's short Alive in Joburg that inspired District 9, check it out now - plus his other short Tetra Vaal)

Wednesday Wacko: Philip Schneider

2009-08-12T17:06:00.000-07:00

This one was brought to my attention via Metafilter. Philip Schnieder claimed to have worked as an engineer on secret underground bases in New Mexico. He died of a stroke in 1996, but hsi fellow UFO conspiracy nuts claim he was murdered because he was revealing information about the government's secret relationship with aliens. Despite the fact that he also claimed the government was at war with the aliens, apparently underground:

What is "Cognitive Dissonance," Alex?

2009-08-05T15:35:00.001-07:00

From today's Politics section on MSNBC.com:

And then from today's Business section on MSNBC.com:

Rant: my pet peeve, poor writing.

2009-07-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

I'm a writer. It is what I do for a living, as a hobby, and just as part of my nature. As such, I am constantly aggravated by the lack of regard for the skill of writing that I encounter at every turn. Even so-called professionals in the field of journalism hurt my brain on a regular basis with idiotic phrases and poorly thought out sentences. CNN and MSNBC regularly publish crap so poorly written that I want to take a hammer to someone's typing hand to put an end to their horrible writing.

As if that would do any good. They'd just dictate their crap.

I will give you an example of how someone mistakes writing something that "sounds good" for actual good writing. This one was on a popular Web site, so I don't expect too much, but it just tweaked me:

Let's ignore the "looks like more like" phrase. That's a clearly stupid error. The more insidious problem is: "more like a work of art than an architectural masterpiece."

Merriam-Webster defines "architecture" as "The art or practice of designing a building". So an "architectural masterpiece" damn well better look "like a work of art." If you're going to compare something to another thing that it isn't, you ought to be sure that it isn't actually that thing.

This is what gets my blood pressure up the most when I'm reading. Not grammatical or spelling errors, but things that don't make sense or clearly weren't thought out properly.

I know I shouldn't care and I should just let it go, but if I give up hope that my fellow humans will learn to write properly, then I will have to give up hope in my fellow humans altogether.

Mopar, More Power

2009-07-17T11:36:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I test drove the bad-ass 2007 Dodge Charger R/T. It was pretty cool.

Since then, though, Dodge has gone retro again, offering up a new Dodge Challenger. The original Challenger and it's Plymouth counterpart the Barracuda ranked in my top 5 favorite muscle cars. I haven't gotten to test drive one of the new ones yet, sadly. And now Jay Leno has made me think I wouldn't be happy driving one of the stock ones now that Hurst is making a supercharged 09 Dodge Challenger mod.

Reading list

2009-07-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of reading. Without, one's brain atrophies, and one learns little. Even fiction can be educational, exposing you to new philosophies and ways of thinking. On the Road resonated with my soul, Naked Lunch changed my whole concept of what "narrative" and "story" meant. Catch-22 changed my perception of what WW II was all about.

I've never been in danger of running out of things I want to read. Recently, though, I decided to start a reading list to codify what it is I want to read, and what I should select next. It is a mix of old and new, fiction and non-fiction. Next on the list is No Surrender: My Thirty Year War, the autobiography of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who emerged from the Philipinne jungle in 1974. He spent 30 years dodging U.S. military, Philipinnos, and even Japanese trying to get him to surrender; all because he believed WW II was still going on and claims that the war was over were just tricks used by the "enemy".

So I put to you, all both of my readers, what do you suggest I add to my list? Throw 'em out there.

When good artists go bad

2009-07-09T10:37:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of Tony Iommi and his work, and am very glad I got to see the original Black Sabbath line-up in concert (twice!). I am also, quite unapologetically, a fan of Billy Idol. However, today I stumbled across a song they did together on Iommi's "solo" album Iommi from 2000, which I didn't even know existed...and it's just so bad. Not even "so bad it's good." More like Huey Lewis and the News' song "Bad is Bad".

Yes, I did just reference Tony Iommi, Billy Idol, and Huey Lewis (and the News!) in one post. And yes, I am also unapologetically a fan of Huey Lewis and the News.

So, I present for your listening...what should I say? Unpleasantness? Torture? What's the opposite of listening enjoyment? Anyway, here's Tony Iommi with Billy Idol, "Into the Night":

Long weird week

2009-06-26T17:34:00.000-07:00

So yeah. It's been a strange week, and a long one. I've been busy as hell with work and such, and all that. Trying to train my newest co-worker and doing two or three people's jobs all at the same time. Feh.

I'm going to babble and rant here, and it's a long one, so go get a snack and a juicebox.

Sleepy

But, on the upside, I did get my machine to treat my sleep apnea, so that's been interesting. I've only slept with it on two nights now, but I definitely feel a difference already. Yesterday I was able to get through my day at work with about 3-4 fewer cups of coffee than I normally drink, and I wasn't nodding off at all. I also didn't fall asleep in the car going to work or going home. So yay, I'm happy about this.

Most folks with sleep apnea severe enough for the "machine" get a CPAP, which just blows a constant flow of air at a set pressure into the mask. Those lucky, lucky ones who are too bad off get a BiPAP. The BiPAP has a sensor that knows when you're exhaling, and lowers the pressure until you inhale again. This is for those who need an air pressure so high to keep their airway open that they wouldn't be able to exhale against it effectively.

Guess who needed a BiPAP? That's right, yours truly. It's kind of cool though. The pressure changes help me get to sleep by providing a nice rhythm (why the fuck does "rhythm" have that extra "h"? I had to double-check my spelling because it didn't look right, and that doesn't happen to me much). Inhale loud machine noise, exhale quieter machine noise. Inhale loud, exhale quieter. Repeat until unconscious.

The first night went great. I only awakened once, because the dog woke up and needed to go out. Usually I wake up 1 to 5 times on my own, so this was miraculous. Also, I had not moved, not one bit. This presented a problem, as when I awoke my whole right side was numb. It took about an hour to get the feeling 100% back in my right hand. Awesome! Second night was ok, but not as good as the first. Oh well. Everybody tells me this takes time - even though I feel better already.

Anyway, enough about that. What else made the week weird? Well...

Dead Celebrities
Warning: I may piss you off with this part

It's well-known amongst those who know me that I run a friendly little "Dead Pool" competition each year. As a result, my friends, family, co-workers, and people I barely know have gotten into the habit (which I strangely encourage) of immediately informing me of any celebrity death announcements, and ask me if anyone had the celebrity in question on their list.

This week, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson all died. All were on somebody's list in the competition. Farrah and Michael? Same day.

I was busy at work, and suddenly I have the second job of fielding chat, phone, and e-mail inquiries about the Dead Pool status. I was busier than a date rapist at a sorority party.

I get called morbid, sick, disgusting, ghoulish, cold, soulless, heartless, callous, and just plain mean for running my annual competition, and it doesn't bother me one bit. And this week, I feel like explaining why that is.

You see, we're talking about celebrities. People I don't know. People you don't know. People your cousin's friend tells you he knows, but he's lying about it. The people who do know these celebrities don't know me, and they don't read my blog or my Facebook status and they aren't participating in my Dead Pool competition. So I'm not rubbing someone's death in the face of those who knew them, cared about them, had a personal relationship with them. What I am doing is amusing myself with the concept of death, because for someone who spends any amount of time contemplating their existence (and, by extension, contemplating their own mortality), it's either amuse yourself with the concept of death or live in paralyzing fear of it. I laugh at death!

In our current culture, many people feel like they have a personal connection with celebrities. They become personally vested in the life of this person they've never met. So they seem to develop this illusion that I'm rubbing their face in their favorite celebrity's death. That I'm hurting them somehow.

Now I'm certainly not above having my feelings vested in a celebrity I don't even know. Witness my feelings about the death of Hunter S. Thompson. However, I don't get so vested that I think of some slight to them as a slight to me. And that's where I part company with those who say I'm heartless.

Also, there's the fact that every time a celebrity dies, somebody is going to call it tragic. Even if said celebrity was 110 years old. Yes, maybe it is tragic to those who actually knew and loved the person - but you and I? We are having a relationship with a public persona, not the human. I feel bad for those who had a real relationship with that person, because they lost someone, but death happens to everyone. We all experience the loss of loved ones in our life, and we don't expect someone who never met said loved one to cry about it.

There is one way I will call a celebrity death tragic, and that is if the person had much to left to give their art/science/profession/whatever but was cut short. It's the art, the science, or what have you that these people are contributing to our lives, and I agree that those things can add value to our lives and give us a reason to feel vested in that celebrity. Hence my feelings about Thompson - his writings added some meaning to my life. Still, I don't view his death as tragic, because his prime was over, and he wasn't going to be writing another Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or anything any time soon.

And this is where my little tangent converges with this week's celebrity deaths.

I've heard some guys lamenting the passing of Farrah Fawcett, because she was their first celebrity crush or what-have-you. And I get that. But why mourn her death if the part of her you care about was how she looked 30 years ago? Did you really get turned on by 60-year-old Farrah? I doubt it. And let's face it, she was never a serious or talented actress, she was a sex symbol. When your most critically serious role was the template for every LifeTime Channel movie ever made, you don't have a lot of credibility as an artist. So, tragic for her family and loved ones? Yes, in this day and age 62 is young to die. For the rest of the world? Not so much.

Then there's Jackson. Sure, he was a cute kid who could sing, and made a bunch of music that a whole lot of people inexplicably (to me anyway) love. But the music he was famous for was done over 20 years ago. He was planning a comeback tour, but do you think he was going to recapture the Thriller days? Wasn't going to happen, my friend. And then there's the biggest reason his death was no tragedy: one less child molester in the world. If you have ever complained that O.J. got away with murder but claim the King of Pedophilia - oh, so sorry, I mean "King of Pop" - was just "misunderstood," you are one delusional hypocrite.

Enough of my bloviating. Done for now. Mattbear out.

Two Wheels are better than Four

2009-06-10T13:21:00.000-07:00

It's Wednesday now, so maybe I've rested enough to write about my weekend. The weekend wore me out; I had to go back to work Monday in order to chill out.

Last Thursday after work, I headed straight for my Novice Riders Motorcycle Safety Course. Thursday was three hours of class time, and largely quite boring. From the class, it was straight home and to bed to get up for work Friday morning.

Friday was work, and then straight from work to my second sleep study - this time they needed to fit me with the right mask and get the air pressure set right. Saturday morning was straight from my sleep study to my motorcycle class.

Saturday's class was half riding time, half class time. Much more fun, and more intimidating. During Saturday's riding time, one woman went a little out of control on her motorcycle and actually bumped into my back tire. I kept my bike upright and perfectly safe, for which I received kudos from the instructor. Unfortunately, it meant the woman failed out of the course immediately. At the end of classroom time, we took the written test, which I totally kicked ass on. I only missed one question, and in fact had initially chosen the correct answer but started doubting myself and went back and changed it. If I hadn't done that, I would have aced it with 100%.

Straight from my motorcycle class to my weekly poker game, where my wife won. She played well and deserved it, while I made a few huge mistakes that cost me the game. From the poker game, it was home to sleep for a whopping four hours before getting up and heading to my motorcycle class again.

Sunday's class was all riding time, topped off by the riding test. The riding test starts with figure-eights, which I had done poorly on during practice. Sure enough, I blew the figure-eights in the test. What's more, the first test was figure-eight followed immediately by the "swerve to avoid danger" maneuver. I had done fine on that in practice, but in the test I was so thrown off by how massively I screwed up the figure-eight that I messed up on the swerve. The rest of the test I did fine on, but I was sure I had failed.

I was second in line to do the test, so I was also second in line to get my score. Lo and Behold, I passed, with an 84 out of possible 100 (and a passing score of 80). I actually had to verbally verify with the instructor that I passed, so great was my disbelief, and I cheered loudly when he confirmed my passing score. Yippeeee!

So now I can go to the DOL and get my motorcycle endorsement just by handing them the card the instructor gave me saying I passed. Then, it's just a question of getting my old clunker motorcycle up and running again. And then going somewhere relatively safe and doing some practice - lots of practice - because passing by just 4% doesn't seem that great.

My weekend; or, "How often do I stop breathing when I sleep?"

2009-06-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting weekend. It started with a sleep study.

For some time, I've known I had sleep apnea, a condition in which one stops breathing every so often when one is asleep. This prevents one from getting to the lowest layers of sleep, where one actually gets rest.

My father-in-law was diagnosed with severe apnea years ago, and has since slept wearing a mask attached to a CPAP machine. This machine forces air into your airways, keeping them open and preventing the apnea.

I have been resistant to the Darth-Vader-esque sleeping machine, and refused for years to get my apena diagnosed and treated. The main reason is, it seems once you start with the machine, you can't sleep without it. Vacation? Have to lug it with you. Camping? Forget about it.

A couple of months ago, I realized that I was getting more and more tired - nodding off in meetings at work, never having any energy, unable to drive more than a few blocks wihout getting drowsy. I went to see my doctor, worried there was something wrong with my thyroid. It took him all of 30 seconds to determine: "Nope, it's your apnea." I was scheduled to see their sleep disorder specialist, and given a little questionairre to fill out.

I filled out the questionairre and saw the sleep specialist. It took him about 30 seconds to say, "Yep, you have apnea; let's get you scheduled for a sleep study." He then explained how it would work: I would spend a night at the hospital all wired up. They would study the data to determine if for sure I had apnea. Then I would come back for another night a couple of weeks later and spend the night, while they fitted the mask and adjusted the machine to fit my needs. BUT, if the apnea was bad enough, they could fit me for the mask the first night. The doc was pretty confident mine was bad enough.

So, last Friday. I get off work, wait for my wife, she picks me up and we head to the hospital. We were rushing so I forgot I was supposed to eat dinner before I got there. As a result, I wound up eating in the hospital cafeteria (while my Judas of a wife went to one of my favorite Seattle restaurants and got my favorite dish). Since I went down there to eat, I was the last patient to get hooked up for the monitors, so my sleep study didn't start until 11pm.

A nice young lady came in and asked me to sit in a chair. I sat down and she started glueing and taping electrodes to my scalp, chest, etc. - I even had to run two pairs of wires through my shorts to connect to my legs. She told me I could turn the TV on if I wanted, as it would take about 20 minutes. I just smiled and sat there. I am used to haivng my wife shave my head every so often, and having to sit still for 15-20 minutes. It puts me in a Zen sort of state.

I wish I could have gotten a picture of what I looked like when she was done. Easily 20 wires were coming off me, all attached to a little blue box she plugged into the wall when she had me lay down. The wires were a nuisance as I tried to sleep, but they couldn't stop me from sleeping. I was too tired. Every time I woke up and needed to go to the bathroom, I had to sit up, say something out loud, and wait for her to come help me. She would unplug the little blue box from the wall and hang it, with all the wires, around my neck. When I was done, she would come back in the room and take the box off me and plug it back into the wall as I lay down.

There was no clock in the room, so I never knew what time it was or how far through the sleep study I was. This was strange for me, as I obsess over what time it is and normally check every time I wake up. Eventually, the tech came in and woke me, and said the study was done.

I was surprised to find that they had not put the mask on me that night as the sleep specialist had figured. I mentioned this to the tech, and she explained: the doctors don't let them put the mask on past a certain time (about 2am) and it was about that time when they had the data they needed to go ahead with it. So, since I forgot to eat dinner before I went, I got started too late and now I have to go back for the mask fitting/machine setting/etc. Oh well.

The tech asked me how I slept. I told her it was the most soundly I had slept in weeks. It must not have been good, because this idea horrified her.

Between writing stuff about the sleep study on good ol' Facebook, and talking about it at the BBQ/Poker game I attended the next day, I found out that way more of my friends have CPAP machines then I was aware of. And they all wanted to know one thing: How many times did you quite breathing?

This seems to be a sort of badge of honor among those with sleep apnea (apneacs?) - how fucked up your breathing is makes you a more badass case.

Alas, the tech did not tell me how often I quit breathing, so I have no such badge.

Soon, I shall have my CPAP that I have dreaded all this time. But if it lets me sleep, and not be this tired all the time, I welcome it at this point.

Crazy Conspiracy Theories: only funny when they're about other people

2009-05-29T10:55:00.000-07:00

One of my intellectual fascinations in this life is crazy conspiracy theories. I collect 'em like trading cards. Indeed, I've been thinking about reviving my old feature Wednesday Wackos on this blog.

Another of these unhealthy fascinations is serial killers. The whole "human monster" concept interests me. I've read about them, written about them, my favorite movie is about them. One of my teachers in college had met a particularly creepy serial killer, and I always loved his stories about the guy.

So it was with great interest that I read the story of a humble college professor who has been dogged by a crazy conspiracy theorist who believes the professor was the Zodiac Killer.

I never really thought before about what it must be like to be the target of some crazy's wacko theory. Usually it's somebody famous, like politicians, who gets themselves in the crosshairs of the tinfoil hat brigade. And usually the theory is so ridiculous, nobody takes it seriously.

But what if you're just Joe Blow, and the abject insanity of the theory gets glossed over by headlines? The professor sure seems to have taken it in stride that this nut has aimed at him, but I'm not so sure I could. I really suggest reading the professor's article, Confessions of a Non-Serial Killer.

Joss Whedon knows his hotties

2009-05-28T14:43:00.000-07:00

I'm a fan of the show Dollhouse. Love it, love it, love it. When Fox announced they were going to renew Dollhouse, they also announced that they were not going to renew Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles. I immediately joked that it was fine with me, because then Joss Whedon could get Summer Glau and Eliza Dushku on Dollhouse.

Seems Joss was thinking the same damn thing.

There's a bit on sci-fi fan blog io9 that says he's already planning Summer's role in Dollhouse. I haven't read the article yet, because it contains some spoilers about what role she might play. I don't want to know, and don't want to let it interfere with my dream that she'll play a Dollhouse client who asks for Echo as the dominatrix.

The article, in case you want to read it, is here.

Willpower...fading....

2009-04-16T15:10:00.001-07:00

Somebody at work has an Initech coffee mug, and just left it sitting on the breakroom counter. It took all my self-control not to hork it.

Why the Gov't. shouldn't bail out GM

2009-04-10T14:25:00.000-07:00

There's been lots and lots of debate about the Federal bailout of the U.S. auto industry. I'm no economist, so I don't get too heated about it - but I do have one argument for letting GM go bankrupt. Ready?

GM decided to make a "personal transport" concept. They partnered up with (fucking) Segway and came up with this, which they've been touting at car shows:

Wow. I've seen backhoes with more style and panache.
And this is after Toyota has already been showing off - and planning to put into production - their "personal transport" concept called the iWheel (or iReal, depending on who you ask):

Explain to me again why GM deserves billions of taxpayer dollars? And how they will use it to turn around their company?

News Editors need to think more

2009-02-27T11:38:00.001-08:00

I was reading MSNBC today, as I do most days, and a couple of headlines struck me funny:

OK, great. You're fact-checking Obama's speech. Maybe if you'd done a little more of that during the Bush presidency, we wouldn't be in Iraq right now, and the Shrub wouldn't have gotten a second term.

Then there was this:

I'm just thinking, if it was anybody but the President, some Secret Service agents are getting fired. ;)

Some things that amuse me

2009-02-26T13:33:00.000-08:00

Life for me is still too depressing for me to want to blog about it (how emo is that?). So I'm just going to post here some things I've found amusing recently.

F*** My Life is a great site where people post short, 1-4 line stories about why their life sucks. A lot of it is teenagers posting typical teen drama, but there are some real jems in there to provide some schadenfreude. My favorite so far:

"Today, I went to my first strip club for my friends birthday. I also found out what my girlfriend does for a living. FML"

(The "F***", by the by, is how they actually title their site. I personally have no problem saying "fuck". Fuck. Motherfucker. Fuckwad. Fucktard. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I use "fuck" as my own personal celebration of the First fucking Amendment.)

Passive-Aggressive Notes is a blog showing all those stupid notes people "anonymously" put up around the office bitching about stuff. Some funny stuff there.

And then, there's a conversation I had with some friends:

(we were discussing state politics)

Jeff: Whatever. I just want it to be legal for me to shoot Tim Eyman.

Me: We should start an Initiative!

Jeff: That would be fair...

Me: If we throw a tax cut into it, Eyman will back it himself!

(Erik comes up, Jeff tells him what we were saying)

Erik: I don't want to kill him...just kick his ass.

Jeff: I didn't say kill him...we could just wing him. We could make it a lottery! We could even hold it four times!

(Ok, I thought it was funny at least)

Meme time: The Interviews

2009-01-28T11:46:00.000-08:00

Getting on the meme train courtesy Wiwille and Mizzle:

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. (I get to pick the questions).
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

So, without further ado, Wiwille's interview of yours truly:

1. At approximatley what album should AC/DC have retired?

Ooooh, tough one to start with. I would say the decline started with Fly on the Wall, but there were still some good songs on various albums after. Razor's Edge was a good, solid album and return to form, but Brian Johnson's voice was pretty much shot already. What little I've heard from the recent Black Ice is ok but very commercial, so I am going to say they should have quit after touring for Razor's Edge, say around 1992.

2. If you were Emporer of world would you enact a law requiring people to pass a test in order to be able to procreate?

As appealing as that sounds, no, I wouldn't. I have a kid, and so I understand how people feel about their children, and could not violate parental rights in so arbitrary a manner.

3. Why do you enjoy reading Stephen King?

When he is at his best, he crafts some very tight stories, and they are easy to relate too. He captures human weakness very well, and plays on that. His descriptiveness and detail can contribute to very real settings and stories.

Unfortunately, at his worst, he just plains sucks. His biggest weakness is endings. The man cannot end a novel to save his life half the time.

4. If you were on death row what would you choose for your last meal? Please detail the main course, side dishes, and dessert.

I'm a simple man. For an appetizer, saganaki (Opa!). Ribeye steak, medium-medium rare, with grilled onions, sauted mushrooms, and some Lee & Perrins worcestershire on the side. Colcannon. Caesar salad. A decent glass of Shiraz.

And, because I have a weakness for sweets, a triple dessert: baklava, galaktoboureko, and Morton's legendary hot chocolate cake.

Yum.

5. Why don't you post on The Inexcusable anymore?

I've been too busy, and life has just been too depressing and stressful to write about or do videos about lately. I am trying to drag myself out of that, and have sworn to myself that I will do more posts here. Starting today, with this one.

And now for my interview by Mizzle:

1. What is your favorite beverage?

Water. Seriously. If you mean alcoholic beverage, it varies between a good Shiraz, a White Russian, a Jack & Coke, or a Maker's & Ginger.

2. Who is your favorite TV or Movie character?

Hmmmm. Not real good at picking a single favorite anything.

TV: tie between The Doctor, of Doctor Who, and President Josiah Bartlett, of The West Wing.
Movie: tie between Raoul Duke, of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Hannibal Lecter of ManHunter/Silence of the Lambs/Hannibal/Red Dragon/Hannibal Rising.

3. What is in your personal hell?

I would be forced to watch alternating Michael Bay and Uwe Boll movies for eternity, but all their soundtracks would be replaced by ABBA albums, and I would have to sit between Paris Hilton and Ashton Kutcher while Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Dick Cheney had a messy three-way in the row in front of me.

4. Who needs to disappear quicker, Bill O'Reilly or Joan Rivers?

O'Reilly for sure. Rivers is just annoying. Bill O'Reilly is walking affront to humanity.

5. What is your least favorite movie?

There are so, so many to hate. I mean, I've watched Blair Witch Project 2, for god's sake. But the winner of this title is probably still a weird, little-known movie called Cold Heaven.

I mean, it starts out with a sex scene. OK, cool - for like 2 minutes. Then it gets preachy because she's cheating on her husband, played by Mark Harmon, whom I loathe, so booo - that lasts like 20 minutes. Then Mark Harmon gets hit in the head by a speed boat and dies. Yay dead Mark Harmon! - but that's only for like 2 minutes. Then she grieves, which is always boring on film, so boooo - that lasts another 30 minutes. Then Mark Harmon comes back from the dead! Yay Zombie Mark Harmon! - but that's like 5 minutes, and Zombie Mark Harmon disappears from the movie with no explanation. Then she sees a nun going into a church or something, only it's a nun who died like a century ago, and the church doesn't exist, and it all makes no sense, and at the end you're supposed to have learned some important spiritual lesson that even the christian who saw it with me didn't get - and that's like 50 minutes.

Unemployed Man, ep. 10: Post-Election Elation

2008-11-05T16:36:00.000-08:00

I really wanted to use "Elected" by Alice Cooper, but I didn't have that one.

And here is Nader sticking by his use of "Uncle Tom". When a Fox News personality calls you out for using a tactless, racist phrase, you have seriously fucked up.

Unemployed Man, ep. 9 - Tales of the Crazy Neighbor

2008-10-22T14:04:00.000-07:00

I think me slurping my coffee really makes this the best "Unemployed Man" ever.

Unemployed Man, ep. 8: Life's a Beach

2008-09-18T15:03:00.000-07:00

Some problems with the audio - sorry about that.
And check out the shine on that dome!

Weekly Weight Update #5

2008-08-25T06:06:00.000-07:00

More good news as this week's weigh-in was 257.2 and 35.7% body fat...meaning I gained muscle and lost fat. Yay!

Also, I will be incommunicado for a week due to Burning Man. Have a good week!

Weekly Weight Update #4

2008-08-18T19:02:00.000-07:00

OK, I know I said I'd have a new video soon, but I've been really really busy. Soon, I promise.

As for this week's weigh in: 256.6, and 36.4% body fat. So once again, losing some muscle, but the fat's going in the right direction.

Weekly Weight Update #3

2008-08-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

Finally, a smidgeon of progress. Weighed in today at 259 even, but 36.3% body fat...which means I actually lost some fat and gained some muscle. I attribute this mostly to the yardwork I did last week (lots of it!)

Video to come soon.

Weekly Weightloss Update #2

2008-08-04T12:47:00.000-07:00

So this week I weighed in at 258.4, a loss of about 1 and a half pounds. Body fat remains the same. Clearly I need to get more exercise.

Unemployed Man, with Special Guest: Employed Woman

2008-08-03T22:33:00.001-07:00

Weekly Weight Loss update #1

2008-07-28T11:37:00.000-07:00

As promised, I'm giving an update with the embarrassing numbers of how fat I am, to help keep me motivated. Last week's weigh in was 262 lbs, 36.7% body fat.

This morning, I weighed in at 259.8lbs, still 36.7% body fat. So I did lose weight, but I lost muscle as well.

Still, I'm back to where I was when I started tracking my weight 5 weeks ago, so it's a good start.

Unemployed Man gives a Movie Review

2008-07-24T15:50:00.000-07:00

Also...

2008-07-11T15:47:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite movies is Fight Club, based on the book by Chuck Palahniuk. I just discovered there's a trailer out for a new movie based on another of his books, Choke.

I do still write occassionally

2008-07-11T15:26:00.000-07:00

Amidst my recent videos (which shall continue) I wanted to stick in a quick written post.

There's a nearly 40 minute long video of Neal Stephenson giving a talk at Gresham College, mostly about genres of fiction, why those genres don't matter anymore, and about geek culture. Stephenson is an amazingly intelligent speaker, although his speech is horribly monotone. I've seen him speak in person, and found his intelligence can overcome the boring tone though, and the same holds true of this video.

I'm particularly proud that he says essentially that we're all geeks, something I have said before.

Unemployed Man, with Special Guest: Launchpad

2008-07-09T15:50:00.000-07:00

The Sons of Liberty, on Wikipedia

Unemployed Man on a Monday

2008-06-30T17:28:00.000-07:00

What I meant to say, about Jason Webley, is that he is playing at Neumo's on Thursday. I left out where exactly he is playing when I said it on the video.

Unemployed Man, Weekend Edition

2008-06-29T16:12:00.000-07:00

Hazard Factory

The further adventures of Unemployed Man

2008-06-27T18:56:00.000-07:00

Still unemployed.

The Adventures of Unemployed Man

2008-06-25T17:10:00.000-07:00

Hmmm. Perhaps next time, I should raise the camera up so I don't show quite so much thigh...

Mint Juleps

Soooooooo pissed at Netflix right now

2008-06-20T15:15:00.000-07:00

Netflix, a service I love, has really pissed me off today. They have announced that they are getting rid of the profiles and separate queues.

Seems like a little thing, but you know, I pay for this service. Why should I continue to pay for the service when they have taken away the one thing that makes them superior to their competitor?

If it wasn't for the profile system on Netflix, I'd be awash in my wife's period piece romance movies, or watching 4 or 5 Cirque du Soleil DVDs in a row (I like Cirque du Soleil, but I need to break up watching their DVDs with something else!).

To add insult to injury, when they get rid of the profiles, they aren't going to merge or save the queues in any way. If you want, they'll e-mail you your queue list, and you can add it back manually.

I have 500 movies in my queue. I don't want to add them manually. Fuck you, Netflix.

I'm so mad, I'm thinking about canceling our account and switching to Blockbuster. And that's saying something, because I really, really hate Blockbuster.

Kickass song (and video): "Idle Hands" by The Gutter Twins

2008-06-10T13:16:00.000-07:00

Saw this on Boing Boing and loved it - a new video from The Gutter Twins, a project of Mark Lanegan (formerly of Screaming Trees, who I very much like) and Greg Dulli (formerly of the Afghan Whigs). Kickass song, and a pretty cool video too.

Documentaries! and other stuff I like

2008-06-06T13:14:00.000-07:00

There are a couple of documentaries coming out about things that interest me, and I'm excited to see them.

First off, Gonzo - a documentary about Hunter S. Thompson, one of my heroes. Documentary features Johnny Depp, Jimmy Carter (!), and more. Supposedly releasing on July 4, 2008. If it shows in Seattle, Wiwille and I are going dressed as Hunter. Trailer can be found here.

Second, Achievers - a documentary about fans of the film The Big Lebowski, and about the Lebowskifest. This apparently will screen for the first time at the upcoming Lebowskifest in Louisville, Kentucky in July. Trailer below, embedded from YouTube.

If you've never seen the brilliance that is The Big Lebowski, you must immediately go to the nearest video store and rent it and watch it - seriously, right now, quit reading this. I'm not sure I can talk to anyone who hasn't seen this movie.

Aside from documentaries, the Steampunk band Abney Park got interviewed recently. Not a bad little interview. They also got lauded by Coverville for their cover of the Radiohead song Creep. Coverville is a cool podcast that talks about and plays various artist's covers of famous songs. It's actually quite a well-done podcast. I probably never would have known about it had they not played Abney Park.

The Blues just got a little bit bluer

2008-06-02T12:19:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of Blues music. Years ago, I realized that the best blues musicians were very old, and likely wouldn't be around much longer. Muddy Waters and many others were already retired or dead, but three stood out in my mind, and I vowed that I would see those three perform live before they died or quit.

The first was John Lee Hooker, who really defined my love for blues music. I got to see him perform in 1995. He died six years later.

Second was B.B. King, arguably the biggest name in blues. I got to see him perform just a couple of years ago, with young whippersnapper (by blues standards) Kenny Wayne Shepherd opening. It was an amazing show. King is still alive and performing, so I hope actually to be able to see him perform live again.

Last but not least was Bo Diddley, rabble-rouser and self-proclaimed founder of rock 'n' roll. I got to see him perform live in 2000, as part of the opening celebration for the Experience Music Project. I saw a lot of great musicians perform that day, but it stands out mostly for getting to see this guy play.

But Bo Diddley died today. Which is sad, but part of life, and makes me a little bit happier that my trifecta of old blues musicians I wanted to see in concert before they died was a goal I was actually able to accomplish.

Just Another Weird News Post

2008-05-22T14:09:00.000-07:00

Talk about munchies - one stoner in New Zealand eats a bunch of food while waiting in line at a store, finds he has no money, and offers to pay for it with marijuana. Unfortunately for him, a uniformed police officer was in line behind him.

One guy apparently didn't understand why "javelin catcher" is a bad thing (WARNING: if you are squeamish, there's a photo here you don't want to see) - but after "catching" the javelin, he kept working.

Drinking and sex? Probably not too bad. Sex and knife play? Freaky, but not "bad", per se. Drinking and sex and knife play? Makes your safe word useless.

Rampant stupidity.

2008-05-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

I didn't have to look far to top the stupidity described in my last post. Apparently, a substitute teacher in Florida did a little magic trick for his class in which he made a toothpick disappear. Hardly on the David Copperfield level of legerdemain. But, according to the local news in Land 0' Lakes, FL, enough to get him accused of "wizardry", a "huge issue" in the eyes of the school district, who have said the sub cannot take any assignments until they have a hearing.

Seriously. I can't make this shit up.

No word yet whether the hearing will involve Trial by Drowning.

And, lest I make it seem as if other places have a monopoly on stupidity, I shall relate what I just overheard in line at the Subway right here in my town. Two guys were standing behind me, and had this to say:

Guy 1 (reading the menu): It says "$5 any regular foot long sub." What does that mean?

Guy 2: I don't know.

I almost had an aneurism, right there in line at the Subway. I would have died, and the last thing I would have seen would be a picture of that fucker Jared.

Worst Cinco de Mayo EVER.

2008-05-07T09:12:00.000-07:00

Man. Usually, I loves me some Cinco de Mayo. I lived in Arizona for four years as a youth, and CDM is a big deal there. Ever since, I've loved going out for CDM.

In recent years, it's changed a bit in that we often don't go for mexican food, because May 5 also happens to be my mother-in-law's birthday, and it has become tradition to go out for dinner where ever she wants. And these days, whenever my in-laws get to pick our dinner destination, 90% of the time it's Claim Jumpers. Which is fine, because they have good food, and lots of it.

So Monday, I got off work and was looking forward to not having to cook dinner. I got home to find that a) my wife was feeling sick, and b) my mother-in-law was feeling sick. So we weren't going anywhere. I threw a frozen pizza in the oven for those of us that weren't nauseous, and when it was done I popped in a DVD of one of our favorite shows and sat down with the wife to watch it.

We got maybe 10 minutes into it when a call came in from my niece...my nephew was really sick and needed to go to the E.R., but there was no-one to take him. So I got up from comfy couch and favorite show, and drove up to Everett to get him, and took him to the E.R. - where we proceeded to stay for the next five-and-a-half hours. I got to watch a marathon of Cities of the Underworld on History channel (which would be an interesting show, were it not for the exceptionally annoying hosts) while surrounded by the best and brightest Everett has to offer - i.e. a cavalcade of meth heads, homeless looneys, and teenage mothers.

Seriously. This is one of the conversations I had to sit through:

Annoying Guy (to girl - probably about 19 - who just came in and sat down): Hey! Where's Shane?

Girl: At home. Sleeping. He has to work at 6:30.

A.G.: So? He should still be here with you. How's he doing?

Girl: Sober, surprisingly. I told him he had to straighten up or I was going to leave.

A.G.: Good for you.

Girl: He got mad at me yesterday for buying diapers for my son.

A.G.: Because it cut into his beer money?

Girl: No, because we have a baby on the way and need to save money.

This made me despair for humanity. Annoying Guy went on to make jokes about wife beating (his wife was there for a swollen eye from an infection) and talked about some guy who is accusing him of being, and I quote, "a chi-mo", which I think meant "child molester". Awesome.

I was wearing one of my Utilikilts, and Annoying Guy asked me if it was a kilt or a "skilt". I told him it was a Utilikilt brand kilt. He proceeded to ask me if I knew "Morgan", his friend who had a "skilt" (part skirt, part kilt, according to Annoying Guy), as if every guy in the metro-Seattle area who wears a kilt just hangs around with each other all the time and are all on a first-name basis. Even if we did, I wouldn't associate with someone who referred to their kilt as a "skilt", because that's the stupidest fucking thing I have heard in awhile. A kilt is a skirt, it's just a skirt for men. Hybridizing the words just hurts my head. It also makes me thinks of Skittles, and if anybody ever calls my kilt a skilt, I'm going to make sure they "taste the rainbow", let me tell you what.

After 5.5 hours, they discharged my nephew with a couple of prescriptions, and he is apparently feeling better now. I got home at 4a.m., and did not make it to work on time the next day.

Sometimes, those Urban Legends are real.

2008-05-02T11:20:00.000-07:00

I frequently check out Snopes.com, particularly the "What's New" section. Today there was an Urban Legend of sorts that rang true for me, as I knew someone who had a similar experience to the "legend"...

This entry on Snopes talks about a few instances of people dressed in costume running into trouble by going to the wrong door. One was even killed. A couple of the incidents mentioned were confirmably true.

This reminded me of something that happened to the family of some classmates of mine when I lived in Arizona. It wasn't exactly like the Snopes story, but it was similar.

In junior high, I went to school with an exceptionally bright pair of siblings, Kathy and Ben. Kathy and Ben had an older brother - I want to say his name was David - who was in high school.

One night, while their father was out of town on business, there was a news report about a violent criminal who escaped from jail that day. Their mother started freaking out and went around the house locking every window and door and pulling all the drapes. What the kids didn't see is that she also grabbed her husband's .357 revolver and loaded it.

David thought it was really funny that his mother was panicking about this escaped criminal, who was probably not going to wander into our boring suburb, and thought he would play a little trick on his mom. He pulled on a ski mask and his "Property of Alcatraz" sweatshirt, snuck out his bedroom window, and went to the front door, unlocked it with his key, and rang the doorbell. Then as his mother approached the door, he opened the door.

His mother pulled the revolver out and fired at him twice. Luckily for David, his mother was a horrible shot, and both bullets went into the doorframe next to him. He pulled the mask off and started yelling for his mother not to shoot him.

David was lucky to have lived through that experience. He later would claim he could see the bullets coming at him, in slow motion. I'm pretty sure that was just panic affecting his memory. But I'm pretty sure it soured him on practical jokes for awhile.

This is why it's called "the web"

2008-04-28T13:34:00.000-07:00

So...follow along with the weird path my browsing took this morning.

Via Digg, I came across this article about a murder that is believed by some detectives to be part of a series of killings, most likely by a group, in the northern midwest. I tend to agree, actually, even though it sounds very conspiracy-theorist. Given the target type (popular jocks), my guess is it's a web of nerdy, computer-using square pegs, a la the Columbine shooters, preying on drunk jocks after parties.

I also didn't take long to find out there was a made-for-TV movie in 1999 called Happy Face Murders, about a serial killer who signs his messages with happy faces. Weird.

So I went looking for more about the actual murders/deaths, and that's when I came across Godlike Productions, a forum full of conspiracy theorists. My love for conspiracy theories is well known, so this looks like a pleasant playground I'll be returning to frequently. From calls for Warriors of Light to ENGULF the world in light on to "Bible Code" predictions of an Ebola Virus biological attack next week - this forum has everything. Even claims that The Last Mimzy, a kid's movie about a magical box that can do seemingly anything, was based on a true story. Awesome.

From there, I followed a link on one post to a site with a little video about "the history of the Cathars." I knew little of the Cathars, so I looked them up in Wikipedia, which had the dope on them. They were a 12th century Christian sect with some pretty weird thinking, who were basically wiped out by a crusade sent against them by Pope Innocent III, and then cleaned up by the Inquisition (no one expects the Spanish Inquisition!)

The video, however, claims that during the siege that basically wiped out the sect, four priests (even though the Cathars didn't have priests as such) divided up a scroll into four parts and took it with them and hid it. The scroll, the video says, was written by Christ himself and says that everybody got him all wrong and the Cathars were right.

Because, you know, all that time he was kicking around with the apostles preaching, he never bothered to the tell the apostles, "No, man, you got me all wrong...it's like this..." and instead he wrote it down and hid it somewhere for a sect that just happened to dig on what he was really saying over a thousand years later. That makes sense.

And these four Cathars went on to found a secret society called "weavers" who weave coded messages into clothes and tapestry in the form of imperfections, and all the codes contain the year 2012, and that's when the Cathars/Weavers are going to get the scroll back together and show everybody.

Hooooo boy. Praise Jesus and pass the LSD.

Check off one goal.

2008-04-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

So, I created my 12 goals for 12 months about 6 months ago, and until this weekend really hadn't accomplished a single one.

This weekend I knocked one off my list - I played in a casino poker tournament.

And I did badly. I wasn't first out, but I was 6th or 7th out (out of a field of 33).

Of course, I'll be back to try again later.

I love leather

2008-04-25T10:37:00.001-07:00

Not like that, you pervert.

OK, like that too, but that's not what this post is about. Pervert.

This post is about this:

A company in the UK called Wested Leather Co. who does movie costumes (including the original Indiana Jones jacket) sells a reproduction of the jacket from The Rocketeer. I couldn't care less about the movie (it looks too Disney-fied to me), but I love that jacket. I saw one of the originals up close at the Science Fiction Museum, and immediately fell in love with it. I so, so, so want this jacket. And I so, so, so cannot afford the $500 price tag.

Movie Review, by request - Perfume

2008-04-24T19:52:00.000-07:00

So yeah. It's been Serial Killer Movie Month at my house. I had Zodiac already at home from Netflix, when Wiwille asked that I review The Young Poisoner's Handbook and Memophage asked that I review Perfume: The story of a Murderer. Like the movie, this review is going to be long and complex. Hang in there.

Based on a novel by Patrick Süsskind that I feel I absolutely must read now, the film tells the story of a young man in 18th century Europe with a super-powered sense of smell who tries to capture the scent of beautiful women in a perfume. To do so, he has to kill them.

But it is far, far more complex than that. Like some of the stories and jokes I tell, this movie takes a long, long time (2.5 hours) to reach an ending that seems (at least on the surface) to have little to do with the beginning - especially if you watch the extra features on the DVD and hear the director's interpretation of the ending's meaning, which has nothing to do with the start. The movie is filled with a lot of vague metaphors and veiled symbolism, which I generally don't care for in a movie.

However! Given a little distance, the metaphors and meanings become more apparent, and blend together to reveal a fairly coherent story - much like the way the perfumes are said to be constructed in the film. The more I think about this one, the more brilliant I find the writing. To construct an entire story in a similar way to how you describe one of the most complex and difficult to describe components of the story is genius.

The main theme in the film (or the "core" of the perfume, as described in the movie) is really "alienation", and it does a fine job of showing the various stages and effects of alienation and being extremely different. The main character is, in the beginning, shunned and misunderstood for being different, then accepted by someone for having an unusual talent, then is shown to exist outside of society because of his extreme difference and the wall it puts between him and others. The gift/curse dual nature of such extreme difference is prevalent throughout, and results in obsession that only heightens the alienation aspect. In the end, the results of the difference are the means of both his salvation and destruction.

Now, that's all about the writing and the story. Of the mechanics of film, I would say the cinematography is the most standout feature. It's not hard to make a beautiful film out of the backdrops of European country side that some of the movie is set in, but to make a beautiful film out of sets recreating dinghy, ugly, overcrowded, dirty 18th century cities is - but it is pulled off wonderfully in this movie.

The acting is good, but more for a matter of casting than anything else. Dustin Hoffman is excellent, as one would expect, and Alan Rickman commands scenes as he always does. The actor who plays the main character looks weird enough and is forgettable enough to fit the role of the outsider.

This is not to say the movie is perfect. The beginning is so long, and so drawn out, it seems at first to have little purpose. It would be easy to condense the first hour into about 15 minutes and set up the rest of the film. This is why the film is better at a distance - you get more meaning, at the risk of putting off viewers with less patience. In retrospect I have trouble saying the beginning was "too long", but if you had asked me an hour and a half into the movie I would have said it was ridiculously drawn out.

The 3rd-party-omniscient narration is annoying and totally unnecessary, and only used in the beginning (heavily) and then sparsely distributed at wholly inopportune times throughout the rest of the film.

The story has several fantastical elements that make it very, very difficult to suspend disbelief. That first hour was necessary just to get me to go along with the whole "super sense of smell" thing, and after that my suspension of disbelief was tried by it a few times (for those that have seen it: when he's on the road following the object of his obsession - that was ridiculous). The ending pulls out a whopper that is even more difficult to swallow, even given the somewhat heavy-handed foreshadowing by Hoffman's character earlier on.

The actresses in the film were obviously chosen for their beauty and not their acting talent. The young woman who plays the main obsession delivers her lines about as well as a cardboard cut-out and certainly cannot keep up with the likes of Alan Rickman.

To keep to the idea of making my review like the film, I'm going to end it abruptly right here. If you have patience and like a well-crafted story that requires thought, watch this one. Otherwise, stick to Hostel: part way too many or whatever.

- Mattbear, movie snob, out.

Lighthouses!

2008-04-23T10:38:00.000-07:00

One of the many things I am an absolute geek for is lighthouses. I love lighthouses. Maybe it's because I grew up in a town with a lighthouse (the one pictured above, in fact). I don't know. I just love 'em.

So I loved it when I found a guide to over 9000 lighthouses worldwide. I could spend days just perusing that site for geeky little facts about lighthouses around the world and the size of their fresnel lenses. (I also love fresnel lenses. I have one sitting around my house to play with, that I took out of an old big screen TV that went TU on us)

Hope you can appreciate lighthouses too. Look up your favorites!

- Mattbear out

The Dream; or, Why is Ted Danson mad at me?

2008-04-22T16:46:00.000-07:00

So Wiwille posted a strange dream he had, and I commented about the rash of weird dreams I have been getting lately. I left a cryptic mention of one in the form of the line "...but why was Ted Danson mad at me?" and now Wiwille says I should post the dream. I wasn't going to, but who am I to argue with one-fourth of my blog's audience? So, here you go - brace yourself, it's a long one:

The dream started out with me in a poker game. Not unusual. Except that the poker game was backstage of some weird play that was going on. The play featured circus sideshow people like midgets and a bearded lady and such, as well as more "normal" actors. As a result, I was very distracted and not playing well. Plus I was hitting on the (non-bearded, non-midget) actresses, and getting shot down left and right.

The play was not going well. It got to the point that the audience was booing, then yelling, then rioting. All the cast members came flooding backstage and trying to run out. I ran out with them.

I got in my truck and drove off. I went to get on the on-ramp for the freeway, only to find they had introduced right then a new anti-congestion process: to get on the on-ramp, one was supposed to pull over into a parking lot (that was on the on-ramp) and park, go get a ticket, get back in your car, and proceed to the on-ramp. However, there was no one taking the tickets and no barrier to entering the freeway.

Regardless, I parked and went to get a ticket - only to discover that they were all out. I walked over to the little booth on the on-ramp to confront the two guys inside. I asked what I was supposed to do since there were no tickets.

Guy #1 says, "Sorry, we're all out of tickets. There were way more people than we planned trying to get on the on-ramp, and now we're out. Nothing we can do."

I says, "Isn't there something we can work out?"

Guy #1 says, "Do you work for Microsoft?"

"Yes, I do," I replied.

Guy #1 turns to Guy #2 and says, "Don't we have a deal worked out with Microsoft?"

Guy #2 responds, "Yeah, but that's only when they're going to work, and it's Sunday. Besides, we're out of tickets. Nothing we can do."

I walk back to my truck, all pissed off. I decide that since neither of these flunkies is taking tickets, or even watching, I'll just get on the on-ramp. Sure enough, they don't stop me. But traffic is so bad I'm not going anywhere - for a long time, obviously. (If you've seen the Doctor Who episode "Gridlock", I got the feeling it was going to be like that)

So, I turn my truck around and drive the wrong way down the on-ramp, which is no big deal because everybody else is too. I decide to head to my friends' (Launchpad and Loxie's) place, which in the dream is very close to the on-ramp (Note: the apartment in the dream was not their actual apartment). My wife is there for some reason, which makes me happy, until she tells me that they were all about to leave. I am still pissed about the on-ramp, so I stay behind, and start goofing around on Launchpad's computer.

After awhile, there's a major earthquake, which somehow was caused by something I did using LP's computer. The earthquake sets off the fire supression sprinklers in their building, and somehow water gets into their electrical panel and shorts out all power to the apartment.

Feeling horribly guilty about causing the earthquake and messing up their place, I head to see the maintenance dudes for the apartment complex. The dude tells me they are too busy dealing with burst water mains and such, and they'll get to the electrical panel later. In the meantime, he says he can give me some propane to hook up so they will at least have heat (in the dream this makes perfect sense that I can just hook up the propane in the apartment and it will work).

Maintenance dude comes out with a big tall old propane tank on a dolly. The tank is rusty and dented and scary, but I figure they need heat, so I take it.

As I get near the apartment, I have to go down a small flight of stairs with the dolly. Being clumsy, I drop the tank off the dolly and it goes bouncing down the stairs. Amazing, it does not explode, but it does make a hell of a racket and a bunch of their neighbors poke their heads out to see what is going on. I get the tank back on the dolly, apologizing to all the neighbors as I do, and wheel it towards the apartment.

Their direct next-door-neighbor was still out, and asks me, "Why does their apartment use gas? My apartment doesn't use gas." I explain about the electrical panel. "Oh," he says, and goes back inside. I notice that somewhere between dropping the tank and talking to the neighbor, I now also have a horse I'm bringing to the apartment with me.

I am puzzled by the horse, but soon distracted because the neighbor on the other side of them comes out in his bathrobe to get his newspaper - and it's Ted Danson. And he's glowering at me and all pissed off. And then he goes back inside. And I'm standing there wondering why Ted Danson is mad at me - is it the noise from dropping the tank? The horse? Does he know I caused the earthquake?

Then I think maybe he's just still mad about losing the lawsuit in that show Damages.

Anyway, I decide to go in. But the door is locked. Their roommate Amber is home. So I knock on the door, but she doesn't hear me. Somehow, the sprinkler damaged the lock, and someone turned it inside out, so the flip part for the lock is on the outside. I turn the lock, open the door, and go in.

Amber comes out to see who is coming in the apartment. She sees it's just me, and then says, "Is that a cow?"

I say, "No, it's a horse. It's just for keeping the grass down."

I lead the horse to a sliding glass door and out to their patio, where there is grass for it to graze on. Then I turn around and see that there is indeed now a cow in the apartment.

I start scratching my head, wondering what the cow is for.

That's when Jen woke me up. And for two days I kept wondering, "Why was Ted Danson mad at me? And what was the cow for?"

Am I Evil?

2008-04-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

I am generally a nice guy. I try to act like a gentleman, holding doors for people and such. I let people go in front of me at the grocery store if they have only a few items or have an impatient kid.

But every now and again, I get the worst kind of compulsions to do really cruel things. If someone cuts me off in traffic or doesn't use a turn signal, I have to remind myself that I could go to prison if I speed up and ram them off the road.

Today there are window washers at our buildings. As I went into the cafeteria to get lunch, they were three floors up, and the ropes from their rigs hung to the ground. I had to consciously restrain myself from grabbing one of the ropes and running back and forth as fast as I could.

I know everybody gets these horrible thoughts or urges once in awhile. What I find myself wondering is, does everyone get them as strongly as I do? To the point that they have to stop and think to themselves, "No, I mustn't do that, it's wrong"?

And what makes us think like that, anyway?

They could have just given me that money...

2008-04-16T10:32:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, it's embarassing to work for Microsoft. From time to time, the funny videos they do for the company meeting or for internal consumption get leaked, and to an outsider they often look dumb. The "inside joke" can be lost on the general public.

And then there are videos that marketing does, that just make us all wonder how out of touch these people are. Like the one below. I take no responsibility for the damage this may do to your brain.

The Demon Politics; or, Am I too cynical to have hope?

2008-04-11T12:18:00.000-07:00

You can thank Memophage for the political post/rant/wall-of-text that is about to ensue. Memophage posted (after 9 months of Silent Blog Syndrome) a video of a poem about Barack Obama. The poet expresses mock resentment of Obama for making him want to believe, to have hope, and to care.

It is a feeling to which I can relate. For many years, I have been more cynical about our government than just about anyone who doesn't live in a "compound" with more firearms than a military base. I have stated time and time again that politicians are all 100% corrupt, owned by corporations and special interests, and in politics only out of greed and/or power-hunger. They are wealthy and powerful, and their only interest is in staying wealthy and powerful. They collude, across the so-called "party lines", to keep themselves wealthy and powerful. The two party system, gerrymandering, the electoral college, campaign finance and spending rules, lobbyists - all designed to keep the ruling class ruling. The common citizen is not represented in this government, no matter how many times you read the "We the people" line.

There is no difference between the parties. They posture at being different to distract us from where we really stand in this government - under the thumbs of those we "elect". There is no fair play, no representation. There isn't even a "lesser evil" to vote for. Just two greedy bastards who'd sell there own mother to pick up an extra district's votes. In 2004, who did we get for our Presidential candidates? Two wealthy white New Englanders who went to Yale and were in the Skull and Bones. Show me the difference, aside from the pretend Texas accent one of them uses.

Some people I have said these things to nod agreement, and tell me how horrible it is that the vision of the "Founding Fathers" has been trampled so. And that's where I get even more cynical. The "Founding Fathers" weren't the noble guys our history books claimed. They wrote flowery speech to outline a terrific system, empowering the people and making sure the people got fair representation. But they put in loopholes to keep their flowery speech from being the true law. They were the wealthy and the powerful, and they wanted to make sure they stayed that way. The present state of our government is only so ugly because the wealthy and powerful have perfected the loopholes their predecessors put in place.

And they have done so to the point that they no longer need to even pretend they are serving the people or the country. That is why the Bush administration seems so horrific - they flaunt the fact that we, the people, are powerless. They openly defy the law and the will of the people, and nothing happens because the only people who can stop them are other politicians - corrupt, self-serving politicians who are in on the game.

I'm not putting forth a conspiracy theory here. I'm not saying they all sit around together and plot every move. Implicit collusion isn't necessary. They all understand what they have to do to keep themselves where they are. They all act in their own best interest, and since they are really all part of the same class their best interests are all the same.

So what does all this have to do with a "poetry slam" performance about Barack Obama?

In the midst of the darkest hour of my political cynicism - seeing the Bush administration get away with nearly 8 years of criminal behavior - along comes a Presidential candidate who seems to care. Who seems to make sense. Who seems to not be corrupt. I mean, here's a guy whose opponent for his own party's nomination is basically (legal disclaimer: in my opinion) a known criminal who escaped prosecution through abuse of power, but the worst they can dig up on Obama is that his Reverend said some controversial things or that Obama didn't put his hand over his heart for the national anthem once.

He delivers a positive message. He says he wants to make things better. He wants to fight the corruption. He wants to end the unjust war we're in. He wants our country to be better.

After years and years of abject cynicism, how can I trust this guy? How can I trust a politician? He is a member of the same class, he is in on the game. Yet he seems different. He seems genuine.

He seems like a dream. One that's too good to be real.

As I believe I've mentioned before, I like to be the guy who knows. I like to be the guy who's right. I love saying "I told you so." So how can I get behind this guy and say, "He's our best hope, he's worth it, we should trust him"?

But at this point, I have to. I have to believe that we have some hope. That not all politicians are worthless scum. That at least one of them wants what is best for this country, for its people.

That's what pisses me off about Obama. That, and that he might not win and we'll be stuck with another corrupt dirtbag.

- Mattbear out

Movie Review, by request - The Young Poisoner's Handbook

2008-03-31T11:42:00.000-07:00

As requested by Wiwille, I watched the film The Young Poisoner's Handbook, an interesting film based on the true story of Graham Young, a young man who poisoned several people he knew, killing three.

The film was the first feature-length work of its director (Benjamin Ross), and it shows a bit. The film moves very quickly through some parts (the first murder in particular) and drags a bit elsewhere.If you don't enjoy slow movies, steer clear of this one. The film also shows some tendencies of not knowing what it wants to be. Part serial killer film, part true crime story, part black comedy - it works out ok but does lack cohesiveness.

The cinematography is also a rookie effort. Some scenes are shot so dark it's almost impossible to see what is going on. However, it's not all bad. By design or accident, the backgrounds in this film tend to be quite bland, which actually puts more focus on the actors. Given how character-driven the film is, this turns the bland backgrounds into a good thing.

Hugh O'Connor as Graham Young did a decent job. He plays Graham as a true psychopath; emotionally flat and distant and unable to see why he is so different or scares other people. The performance does go right up to the line dividing "strong" from "over-the-top". If I had a co-worker like the Young portrayed in the movie, and people started getting mysteriously sick at my work, my first thought would be that this co-worker was poisoning everyone.

Roger Lloyd-Pack always seems to me as if he could be the founder of the Over The Top Scene-Chewing School of Acting, but it works ok in this film as he plays the bombastic, abusive father of Graham.

So, to bottom-line it, I would say this movie is decent but not spectacular. The subject is very interesting and worth the time to watch, but I think it could have done better in the hands of a more experienced director.

If there is a movie you would like to see me review, post it in the comments or e-mail me. If you want to double down, ask Wiwille to review the same movie so you can compare and contrast our opinions.

- Mattbear out.

Holy '80s nostalgia, Batman

2008-03-18T13:17:00.001-07:00

Couldn't pass up posting this: a trailer for the upcoming movie Lost Boys: The Tribe. That's right, a sequel to the guilty pleasure full of "two Coreys" goodness, The Lost Boys. They even dug up the dude who played "the other" Frog brother in the original. He's been in one actual movie and one After School Special since The Lost Boys. Perhaps this will be his career revival.

The trailer even features a cover of the awesome song "Cry Little Sister" recently featured in an Erik's Ramblings post. (That "awesome" is not sarcastic. I love that song.)

Two Minutes Hate

2008-03-17T13:24:00.000-07:00

OK, I have to get this out of my system.

There's a guy at my work (nominally a co-worker, but I don't work with him directly). I don't know his actual name (probably Todd - for some reason, I usually wind up not liking guys named Todd). He shall henceforth be known as Miami Vice Reject (MVR for short). The dude always wears button-up shirts and khakis, and I suppose would be good looking if it weren't for the perm-mullet and the goatie that make him look like he just stepped off the set of Miami Vice. His button-down shirt is usually open one or two buttons to show off the gold chain he's wearing. And some chest hair, as an added bonus.

He also gives off a palpable aura of sleaze. Like you can just see him hanging out in some club, "leaning" some girl and using all the cheesiest, crappiest lines in the book to try to get her for a one-night stand. Or selling you a "like new" Mercedes that really has a salvage title because he wrecked it driving drunk 3 weeks before and got his shady cousin to do some Bondo work on it to make it look ok.

And he always - ALWAYS - has a goddamn bluetooth earpiece for his cellphone on. And 90% of the time, he's talking on it. Apparently, not about work, either - I overheard someone who sits next to him complaining today that he's always talking to bill collectors, the IRS, etc.

(For the record, I am writing this on my lunch break. That's my time.)

So today, MVR strolls into the men's room, talking on his damn bluetooth headset. Dude! Seriously, hang up the motherfucking phone for a couple of minutes. Just because your headset is billed as a "hands-free" doesn't mean you have to use it to talk while urinating. You're in the restroom. Give your phone a rest. The person you're talking to? They really don't want to listen to you piss. And the other gentlemen in the restroom with you? Really don't want to listen to you stupid phone conversation.

And of course he walked out without a) flushing, or b) washing his hands.

I don't even know this guy's name, but I hate him. I want to attach that bluetooth headset to the end of one of his fake Italian loafers, and shove 'em both up his ass.

Man.

- Mattbear out.

What a week

2008-03-17T13:03:00.000-07:00

The week of March 10-17 is always an interesting one for me. Why, you ask?

March 10 is my brother-in-law's birthday. Happy Birthday, bro.
March 11 is my son's birthday. He's seven now. I have no idea where the last 7 years have gone. They disappeared like money around an IRS agent.
March 13 is my wife's birthday. Love you baby!
Also our friend Eric's birthday that same day.
March 16 is our anniversary. Both of when we started going out (17 years ago!) and when we got married (2 years ago!).

This year for our anniversary, Jen was going to be gone to Portland on a business trip, so I went with her for the weekend. Our awesome friends in Portland watched the boy while the wife and I went to a restaurant they recommended (a fan-fucking-tastic Morrocan place called Marrakesh) and then a night alone at the hotel. Honestly, probably the best anniversary celebration we've had in a long time.

And for March 17? Well, 24 years ago today, I got hit by car while jaywalking. My knee is still messed up from it. I never forget the date of the accident because it was St. Patrick's Day. (I was in a motorcyle wreck that same year. On July 3rd.)

One more thing...

2008-03-14T15:39:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't be doing my job as a man if I didn't post that today has apparently been declared Steak & BJ Day. (work safe provided you have headphones)

Just a couple of tidbits

2008-03-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

I would like to first introduce you to the awesome wrongness that is the webcomic Truck Bearing Kibble.

And then to the simple intelligently built flash game Grid 16.

For your musical enjoyment today, Tom Waits's "Goin Out West":

Movie Review Time: The Kingdom

2008-03-11T13:34:00.000-07:00

Recently I watched The Kingdom, a political thriller/action movie starring Jamie Foxx and a sort-of ensemble cast including Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, and Chris Cooper.

Jennifer Garner would be the weak link there, generally speaking, but unfortunately none of the actors really get to do much with their 2-dimensional characters. Even Chris Cooper, arguably the most talented actor in the movie, can't do too much with his generically written no-nonsense good ol' boy FBI bomb specialist.

The plot might have been gripping had I been able to give a damn about these transparent characters. Garner's character is shown almost as being a helpless damsel in distress type, even though she's an FBI agent, but Bateman's character is actually shown as wussier because he's the nerdy FBI agent. Wow, clever.

The movie tries to show that terrorism is bred not entirely by religion, but by the constant interference of the Western world in the Middle East and our own lack of understanding of their culture and our impact on them. It also tries to show that not all Arabic people are terrorists, or agree with the prevalent anti-American philosophies, but that many of the people in power there do. All well and good until the end when the movie makes it clear that the harder we fight the terrorists, the harder they fight us.

The Kingdom really seemed to me to a watered-down, explosion-filled take on the same themes explored to much greater effect in Syriana. I would basically say of this movie: Don't waste your time.

I'm also going to steal a page from Erik's playbook and offer to review any* movies suggested by my reader(s). Post it as a reply, or e-mail me

- Mattbear, movie snob, out.

This moment of Randomness brought to you by....

2008-03-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

I am sometimes accused of being a "know-it-all" due to my penchant for spouting little known facts and correcting people's grammar (yes, I am a grammar nazi, or as I view it a defender of the English language. Deal with it!). Thinking that one knows everything is absolutely preposterous, and I take great offense at being called a "know-it-all". I don't think I know everything.

I just know more than you.

(Just kidding, kids!)

Let's get back to normal

2008-03-06T10:27:00.000-08:00

Time to try to get back to blogging and posting my normal inane crap here.

I don't usually call out a particular post by a fellow blogger, but if you haven't read the most recent post [disclaimer: not very recent] on Psyber's Psychosis, you should. It's a funny one, in his rambling weird way, and has a link to an awesome video that anyone in any kind of male-female relationship should watch.

This past weekend I went to a Steampunk meet-up at the Science Fiction Museum (with an after-meet at McMennamin's) that was a lot of fun. Some of the other participants got some great pictures, including a couple of cute ones of my son with the goggles I gave him for the event.

And if you really want a laugh, there has been circulating about the intarwebs a forum thread typically called "Mall Ninjas" that is superbly hilarious. Having majored in law enforcement in college, I knew a few guys like this. Scary.

I'll be back with more, sooner. Promise. For all one of you who still reads this.
- Mattbear out

2008-02-27T11:33:00.000-08:00

I wanted to update this more often, and just when I start trying, life throws something at me to derail my efforts. Last Thursday I received an e-mail from my Uncle Dale, that just asked me to call him. I was pretty sure I knew what it was about, and I was right. My paternal grandfather had died that morning.

It wasn't much of a surprise - he was 94 years old and had already battled (and beat) cancer - but it still left me feeling down. I love my grandfather, and looked up to him. He was a good man. Not perfect, by any stretch, but good.

He taught me to be honest and to tell it like it is, without apology. He taught me to work hard and be the best at whatever I chose to do. He was constantly trying to put one over on me in the form of some jest or exaggeration, and would give me a sly wink when he was caught. He called me "Matthew Alouysis" for some reason I'll never know (Alouysis is an actual boy's name, but not a popular one).

Some of the things I remember best:

When I was 8 or so, all I wanted for my birthday was a pocket knife. My mother would not consent to buying me one. My grandfather took me shopping for one as my birthday present. I got a Schrade with three blades.

He had a croquet set in his back yard, and taught me to play when I was 9 or so. When I was 11, and visiting for 2 weeks, he invited the neighbor's daughter over to play croquet to try to set me up with her.

When I was twenty, I finally got the pleasure of joining him for a cigar and a Scotch on his back porch, something he did everyday. I had waited a long time to get to do that. I asked him not to tell my mother, because she didn't know that I drank or smoked cigars. He gave me hell for hiding my "vices" from my mother even though I was an adult. My (then) girlfriend (now wife) was sitting on the porch, wearing a sweater in August in Eastern Oregon and complaining she was too hot - she had not brought any short sleeve shirts. My grandfather, 80 years old, gave her a wink and told her, "You can take it off - I won't mind."
I plan to be like that if I reach 80.

I'm going to miss you, grampa.

The obituary my uncle wrote for him:

Lewis Norman Hamer
Age 94
Dad left this world to rejoin his beloved wife Rosalie on Feb 21, 2008. Prior to her death in 1999, they had been married 67 years. He was a devoted husband and father, who led an adventurous life and made innumerable friends of all ages.

Dad was born on Feb 1, 1914 in Hoquiam, WA, to Annie Rowley and Roscoe Norman Hamer. Granddad was a carpenter and sawyer at a time when Grays Harbor was a major lumber shipping port, with 13 sawmills. Dad grew up in this booming pre-industrial-safety environment, carrying 5 paper routes in the morning before school, and playing on the log rafts and in the sawmills after school. One of their favorite entertainments was riding the drive belts that powered the machinery in the mill. As he later noted, it was a miracle he lived to grow up.

At the age of 15, he acquired a job driving one of the local cannery owners up and down the coast to inspect his canneries. At 17, he signed on as Able Seaman on a lumber freighter, the SS West Mahwah, which carried lumber and logs from the Pacific Northwest to and from the east coast of South America. At one point he saw 3 revolutions in 3 days. Another time, on the Amazon River, he had to dislodge a 30-foot Anaconda coming up the anchor chain.

After this voyage, he returned to Hoquiam and finished high school, then began his career as a truck and bus driver, machinist and fleet operator. In 1932, while apprenticing in a machine shop, he fell in love with, and married the boss’ daughter, Rosalie Revie. One of his first jobs after marriage was driving motor coach up the Olympic Peninsula from Grays Harbor. Later, until the early 1940s, he drove for Grays Harbor Stage Lines. In 1941, Mom and Dad and their children, Dixie and Clark, moved to South Bend, Wa, driving bus as well as driving freight truck for the canneries. The third child, Dale, was born that year. Dad then became a machinist for Harbor Plywood, and in 1949 they moved to Tacoma where he worked at Inter-City Auto Freight.

In 1951, Dad began his 27-year career with Weyerhaeuser in Longview, WA starting as Asst Master Mechanic, and working up to Maintenance and Transportation Superintendent, in charge of all repair shops, logging equipment and railroad operation. This was an exciting period in the logging industry, when railroad logging was being replaced by truck operation. During this period, he worked closely with tire manufacturers to develop new heavy-equipment tires, and designed and had built a remote-control steering trailer for extra-long loads.

After retiring from Weyerhaeuser, Dad took a job with Ford, as service manager for a truck dealership in Portland, OR. After Ford closed their heavy truck dealerships, he and Mom moved to Pendleton, OR to be branch manager for Diesel Service Unit. After his 65th birthday, he went to work for the competition, Woodpecker Truck. At the age of 70, he retired for the last time. Shortly thereafter, Mom had a severe stroke, that left her largely disabled. For the next 13 years, Dad provided her attentive, loving care, until she died in December 1999.

In his last 8 years, Dad lived alone in Pendleton, enjoying and being enjoyed by his many friends and neighbors.

Dad was preceded in death by his son Clark, who died in 1989. He is survived by his daughter, Dixie Haywood of Pendleton, SC, his son Dale Hamer, of Seattle WA, 9 grandchildren, 5 great-grandchildren and 1 great-great granddaugther.

The family has great appreciation to his neighbors Bea Herd, Harold and Carol Nelson, and the nuns at St Anthony Hospital.
Dad was cremated at his request. A memorial will be held at a later date.

Why I'm kinda mad at Fry's right now

2008-02-19T17:36:00.000-08:00

I love Fry's Electronics normally. The place is like Mecca for geeks, except they put them conveniently nearer to you than Mecca is. I go there and it's like a religious experience. A really expensive religious experience.

Last week, I made a call to check on the balance of my Fry's card. It was really low, so yay. Except it also said I had no credit available. This was not right, so I pushed through to customer service. After explaining about the no credit available thing, the woman said it appeared to be a glitch in the system, everything was fine, I had a dangerously high amount of credit available. Awesome.

Saturday, we went to Fry's because I wanted to buy some cool stuff, as Wiwille suggests I am doing all the time. Shopped for a loooong time, because we always do when we go to Fry's, and got to the checkout with all our stuff, including Rock Band for the Xbox 360. It was a shopping trip made of awesome.

Then our card didn't work. And credit customer service was closed until Monday.

Dammit.

A nice (and hot) manager came over and put all our stuff on hold so we could come back and get it after the card issue was sorted out. Alrighty.

Monday comes, I get the card issue sorted out. For sure. I even call back into their phone system and it tells me I have unhealthy amounts of credit available. Awesome. We go back to Fry's.

The same nice (hot) manager girl is there, and sees us getting our stuff. She says somebody tried to sell our copy of Rock Band, but she wouldn't let them because she didn't want to let down our son. Cool. We get all our stuff and head to the car. As I'm loading the Rock Band box into the car, I see it says "PS2" on it. What the hell? Somebody swapped it so they could sell our 360 version. We go to exchange it, and sure enough, they're out of Rock Band for the 360.

Dammit.

The manager in the Returns department arranged for one to be shipped up to their store from another store in Oregon, and should be here in 2-3 days. That was nice of them, but dammit - we were really looking forward to some cheesy rockin' goodness last night. If I found out who pulled that swap so they could sell our package, I'd kick him in the nuts.

Time flies when you're lame

2008-02-12T15:13:00.000-08:00

It's been forever since I posted here. I am going to try to work on that.

Right now I'm just going to throw a few fun/amusing/interesting links at you:

Alt Text had Lore (formerly of internet awesomeness Brunching Shuttlecocks) do an article on the controversy of supposedly explicit sex scenes in video games. Funny stuff, as only Lore can do.
Flula Borg's American Hot Jams. I don't know what else to say. Courtesy Willtuck.
Sarcastic Gamer does some funny parodies of ads and such. Courtesy my wife.
Not funny, but very cool, PBS has a whole bunch of information about Nikola Tesla.
My heroes Improv Everywhere pulled off a terrific scene at Grand Central Station.
A long time ago, I heard about an episode of Conan O'Brien's Late Show where he went to interview Hunter S. Thompson at his home, and they drank and shot guns. I searched online for it for a long time, but to no avail. Wiwille found it for me. Wiser words have rarely been spoken - "Move your whiskey before you shoot."

All for now. Enjoy.

R.I.P. Bobby Fischer

2008-01-18T18:13:00.000-08:00

My father taught me to play chess when I was 5 years old. I love the game; always have. I probably knew who Bobby Fischer was before I knew who Mister Rogers was.

Fischer died yesterday in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he was living since he became a wanted felon in the U.S. for the simple act of playing in a chess tournament in then-embargoed Yugoslavia. He was 64 years old.

Fischer was crazy as a bedbug, but he was an amazing chess player.

Damn funny....at least if you're me

2008-01-11T18:05:00.000-08:00

If you are married and/or have children, you simply must - MUST - watch this video.

Mockumercials

2007-12-26T14:16:00.000-08:00

My love of wearing kilts is well-known (and at least by wiwille, greatly disliked). So I was amused to visit the Utilikilts site recently and find a contest for mockumercials (fan-made commercials for Utilikilts) and a catalog of previous entries.

Most are at the very least amusing, and some had me cracking up. Except the "Trouser Witch" one (done as a Blair Witch parody, and exceptionally un-funny). My favorites are "What a waist", "They work", "Kilt Faerie", "Kilt Check", and "Good girls".

Most of the mockumercials center around women's fascination with and attraction to kilt-wearing men...which is truer than you pants-wearing pansies might think.

Weird omen

2007-12-18T12:08:00.000-08:00

The collection of buildings I work in now were built about 6 and a half years ago. After our group took up residence here, a bicycle was parked in the bike rack in the underground garage. It was a beat up old blue-greenish 10 speed.

Every time I went to the underground garage level, it was there. Every day, same spot, same lock. For a long time, I was uncertain whether it was being ridden into work every day and parked in the same spot, or if it had just been abandoned. As the years wore on and most of the staff around here changed, I became more certain that the bike had just been abandoned. After over six years, there it was, in the same spot, with the same lock. The one constant in the ever-flowing change that is our office.

Today I went down to the underground level to walk over to the building with the cafeteria, taking the underground route to dodge the rain and cold.

The bike was gone.

I don't know why, but it made me feel strange. The one thing that's been the same since we came to this brand new sparkling campus six years ago just up and disappeared.

It's the most wonderful time of year...Dead Pool time

2007-12-13T15:23:00.000-08:00

Every year, I run a Dead Pool game. Not for money, or anything like that, just for morbid amusement and the prestige of accurately predicting what celebrities will snuff it in the coming year.

The 2007 Dead Pool is just about up, and Charley and Cynthia, who created a joint list, are huge favorites to win. Predicting the deaths of both Anna Nicole Smith and Tammy Faye Messner (nee Baker) put them into the lead.

Given that it's mid-December, it is time for me to give fair warning to all those who play, and any who would like to join in the game this year, that it's time to get your 2008 list going. Just send me 25 celebrity names by December 31, and you have the chance to take the coveted title of Harbinger of Death for 2008. If you are an existing player and just want your list to ride, or just want to put new names in place of those who died, just let me know.

For those who haven't played, the rules:
1. Scoring: If a celebrity on your list dies between midnight Pacific Time January 1, 2008 and 11:59pm Pacific Time December 31, 2008, you get a number of points equal to 100 minus the celebrity's age.
2. Qualification: Honestly, the definition of "celebrity" is pretty loose. Basically, I better be able to find a Wikipedia article about the person.
3. Smack-talking: Encouraged.

Science is Kickass

2007-12-12T10:30:00.001-08:00

I loves me some science. So I enjoyed reading that a recent NASA mission provided some new information about the Aurora Borealis.

Kickass!

The Bush Administration gets dumber, issue #3156

2007-12-11T14:06:00.000-08:00

Apparently, the Bush administration has a policy for hiring the Press Secretary that includes a smart-dumb-smart-dumb clause. To whit:

Ari Fleischer: Smart guy, good mouthpiece. Clearly sold his sold to Satan when he accepted the Press Secretary gig.

Scott McClellan: Such an idiot he actually believed Karl Rove and the White House when they told him they had nothing to do with the Valerie Plame leak. Or so he says in his new book.

Tony Snow: Smart guy, with morals slightly exceeded by a heroin-addicted weasel. I think he not only got the Press Secretary job, but may also have gotten a mortgage on Ari Fleischer's soul as a part of his own deal with the devil.

Dana Perino: Recently admitted that she had no idea what the Cuban Missile Crisis was when a reporter asked a question referencing it.

To my readers: if you are past, say, junior high age and don't know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was, please quit reading my blog. You clearly aren't qualified. You may, however, be just what the White House is looking for in a Press Secretary, but only if two more resign inside of the next year.

What do you geek out about?

2007-12-05T16:09:00.000-08:00

A certain friend's wife is fond of complaining when we play video games that we are "geeking out". She's right, and she's wrong. Yes, we're geeks and we "geek out" about our video games. But I maintain that everyone is a geek about something. Jocks are just geeks about sports. Botanists are geeks about plants. Everybody has something they focus on, obsess on, can talk for hours with someone else about even when the rest of the world couldn't care less. We're all geeks.

As visual evidence, check out the 56 Geek poster. I see at least half a dozen that could be used to describe me.

Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 5: Split Second

2007-11-30T11:22:00.000-08:00

While I never cared for Blade Runner, Rutger Hauer has been in some pretty awesome movies. I am particularly fond of The Hitcher. Eventually, Mr. Hauer's career nosedived and he pretty much did only straight-to-video movies and video game voices (with a few notable exceptions).

Right before this happened, Hauer starred in a sci-fi action movie called Split Second, that absolutely bombed in the theaters. Why did it bomb? Well, the writing was pretty cheesy (the main character's name is Harley Stone, for god's sake), the monster was a direct rip-off of Aliens, and it was a pretty mindless action flick.

So why do I love it? Mostly for Rutger Hauer's over-the-top performance as a burned out, half crazy cop, and the interactions he has with his new by-the-book geeky partner. Yes, it's one of those movies, but in this context the loose cannon/by the book combo works well, and Hauer and Neil Duncan (who went pretty much nowhere after this) have an amusing chemistry that makes the movie watchable. Plus, Pete Postlethwaite who is good no matter what you put him in, and Kim Cattrall before she looked like a well-used leather hand bag.

It's out on DVD, but Netflix doesn't seem to have it. So if you spy it at your local video store, give it a shot.

You'll want bigger guns.

-Mattbear out.

Previously on The Inexcusable:

Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 4: Laurel Canyon

Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 3: the Jason Priestley double-feature

Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 2: A Shock to the System

Obscure Movies I Love, pt. 1: Diggstown

Up 'n' Down

2007-11-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

I had a real up-and-down weekend.

Friday, I won our weekly poker game. Yay!
In the process, I pissed off one of my friends/opponents by breaking poker ettiquette. Boo!
I have since apologized for my behavior, and he apologized for storming out and yelling. Yay!
Plus, I finally got a house rule named after me. Boo/Yay!

Saturday, I officiated a wedding. Yay!
The bride was pretty much insane all day and everything was late. Boo!
The actual ceremony went well and everyone said I did great. Yay!

My Xbox 360 got the Red Ring of Death. Boo!
Microsoft says it's because I plug it into a surge protector and not directly into the wall. Boo!
They're going to cover it under extended warranty because they've admitted it's a production failure. Yay!
I won't have my 360 for 3-4 weeks. Boo!

Got my old '69 VW bus from my brother-in-law's place where it was stored. Yay!
By the time we got to Fall City, it was running on 3 cylinders, having spit out a spark plug (which it has done before) and I had to have it towed the rest of the way. Boo!