Slow day, so have a bunny

There. That's for you. Have a nice day.

Movie Muhtuesdays 10: How To Train Your Dragon - 8-out-of-10 T's

This marks the second time that Dreamworks has created something that I believe will be timeless. The first was the Excellent-On-All-Counts Kung Fu Panda, which I saw in theaters 7 times, I believe. They're getting there slowly, but I hope, and Dragon fuels that hope, that they'll soon join Pixar as makers of films that are truly timeless, instead of flavor-of-the-week things that you can't watch after a few years.

I like Dreamworks, to an extent. They have the desire, they have the drive, they have the talent to make some truly great films. But, when it comes to story, they lack something, and I don't know how to describe that. They use bits in their stories, like songs and jokes and cultural references, that are only fresh for a few years, and then they hit their expiration date.

Panda didn't have that problem, and neither does Dragon.

First off, let me say that Dragon is beautiful. Like, really, really beautiful. They put a lot of work into making this film gorgeous, and it shows. But honestly, that's kind of par for the course for Dreamworks: they've got the art down, it's the story where they usually fail. No fail here, kids, no fail here.

The story is there. It's solid. I think I'll show this movie to my grandkids and they'll love it, even though the BluRay disc I have it on is incompatible with their viewing implants, so they won't be able to watch it on the screen inside their brains, but I think they'll still dig it. The jokes work, the acting works, the visuals are gorgeous, but most importantly: the story is there. And that gives me hope for Dreamworks' future.

The only thing I have any problem with, and this isn't really a problem as much as an observation, is that the people who did the voices are all flavor-of-the-week actors. Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler (unless he gets his act together), America Ferrara, they're all going to fade into obscurity within the next 5 years, probably. I don't want that to happen to any of them (especially you, Gerard), but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. Still, I guess if there was one part of this movie that I would be okay with if it didn't stand the test of time, I'd be all right if it was the fame of the voice actors.

The rest of it? I think that's here to stay, baby. If you know a kid, take them to this, but even if you don't you should go by yourself, or take a friend. It's a fun movie, and I think you'll enjoy it.

Hey, look! New money!

Remember when the new $5 bills came out years ago? Well, I do, and I freaked out a little bit. No one explained to me that the U.S. Mint needs to change the money every so often, just like we update our virus software, or get new cars: the old stuff may be falling apart, and who knows where it's been, honestly?

Now, I love it when new money designs come out. I think it's those artistic sensibilities they pounded into my head at art school: I examine every new design I find, and judge it mercilessly. I had a heyday when I went to Canada last spring break, just looking at the money for extended periods of time... unfortunately, that was the best part of my Canada trip, the rest of which is a tale for another time.

The U.S. Mint has just announced that they're following up their hugely successful (their words) 50 state-series with a National Parks series, and they released the designs for the first 5 quarters, which will be coming out this year. I especially like Yellowstone.

I like coins. For about a year, I've toyed with learning some coin magic, but my big stupid fingers make it difficult. Still, the idea that, using nothing but a coin and some slight of hand, you can entertain people really appeals to me. So, when I hear about stuff like this, that new coins are coming out, I just dig it for some reason.

They'll be issuing 56 coins at a rate of 5 a year, which means there's one year in there that'll be 4 coins short, I guess, but they'll be done in 2021. Give that pic a click: there are some pretty neat designs.

Also, here's a new penny, too.

He was King of the Wild Frontier

All right, it's story time, folks.

When I was a kid, I would spend the night at Grandma's house. It was usually on a Friday, and we'd make a day of it: Mom would take me, and possibly my little brother (Andrew, sometimes called Rudy, which is another story), out to Grandma's, and they'd sit and talk while Andrew and I played for a while, then mom would leave, maybe taking Rudy, maybe not.

After that, we'd pile into Gramma's station wagon-style car, and head into town to get groceries, and then go to the library. This, I think, was my introduction to libraries. And before I ever even thought of books, we'd get movies. We'd take the movies back to the house, Grandma would make dinner, and we'd watch one.

That's when I met Davy Crockett, played by a man named Fess Parker. It aired on Walt Disney's Sunday program in 1954, and it told the life story of Davy Crockett, mixing mostly fact with a little bit of the extraordinary, like having Crockett defeat a bear with nothing but a knife. Crockett's can-do attitude and signature coonskin cap had an effect on me, and I fell in love with history. I haven't really done anything with it, but that love is there, and I try to feed it with knowledge as often as I can.

Fess Parker died last week, on March 18. He was a tall, lanky fellow, but I believed it when he won fights with Injun braves and ran for Congress, and never doubted that his ring-tailed hat was anything less than the best headgear a man could have.

Here's to you, Fess. Thanks for wearing the buckskins and giving me something to enjoy with my Grandma.

Fess Elisha Parker, Jr., August 16, 1924 – March 18, 2010

Movie Muhtuesday 9: The Bounty Hunter - 3-out-of-10 T's

You remember my Cop Out review? It's over here, if you wanna give it a read, to refresh your memory.

Go ahead. I'll wait.

Okay, to recap (because you probably didn't read it, and that's cool cause I'm only making a comparison that I'm gonna explain anyways), Cop Out was funny, but the story wasn't there. It's like it was a bunch of skits loosely strung together with some semblance of a plot. That makes for some great quotes, but not so much a great movie.

The Bounty Hunter was the opposite, but the same. Like, exactly. It's scary, actually.

The plot is there. It's easy to follow. It just isn't fun. This whole movie happens, and you're wondering when the funny bits from the previews are going to happen. Well, those are the only funny bits in the entire movie. You could pretty much just watch the trailer for this movie and laugh more than you will when you actually see it, for two reasons: if you're watching the trailer, it means you're about to see a different movie, which is good, and if you're watching the movie, that means you paid to see it, and that ain't funny.

I dig Gerard Butler. He's Scottish, I'm Scottish, he's in movies where he kicks butt while being Scottish, so I can tell all my friends that that guy kicking butt shares a country of origin with me. It's a good thing. He and Jennifer Aniston (in a slinky dress) are the two reasons I saw this movie, and they're both decent actors. I don't think this big Hunk of Fail is their fault: the script just wasn't funny. It was advertised falsely, as something that it wasn't, which is a comedy. It has all the trappings of a comedy (a decent set up, an absurd situation that you're happy to believe could happen, a little peril to bring seriousness when necessary), it just didn't deliver.

You don't need to see this movie. You've seen everything here somewhere else, and a few glaring plot points (Gerard owes a bookie money, something that is never resolved, and he and Jen used to be married, and they talk about "what happened" a lot without telling us what happened, stuff like that) just kind of made it unnecessary. Also, there's this one guy who is completely... guh. He's supposed to be comic relief, but he's mostly just annoying, and about halfway through the movie he disappears, just to make a phone call at the end to remind everyone that he was there to begin with. Pointless.

This movie got a lower score than Cop Out because that movie at least made me laugh. Here, I'm just short of egging the director's house.

My new favorite book

I know several people who have a book that they can read over and over again: my sister has the last Twilight book (which I forgive her for, because she's young and doesn't know any better), my buddy Chris has the Lord of the Rings trilogy (which he tries to read once a year), and I think we all know a girl who's read Pride and Prejudice 17 times. I haven't had one of those books in years, the last one being Bill Wallace's The Watchdog and the Coyotes, which I read from 2nd to 5th grade, just because it was awesome. I'll bet it still is, actually.

I've wanted another book that I could read more than once for a while, but nothing has jumped out at me in any of my readings over the last few years. Plenty of great books, but nothing that warranted a second read. Well, today, I found it:

The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez.

This, my friends, is a book about an alternate history. There's one city in America, Empire City, that's full of robots and mutants and talking gorilla cab drivers and dangerous science. I read this book about a year ago, and decided to check it out again, just because I liked it so much... and guess what? It's even better this time.

As I've already said, that hasn't happened in a while. In fact, I recommend this book to all of you literate people out there: I've read two books by Martinez, Detective and Gil's All Fright Diner, both of which have knocked off mah socks with their sheer rockitude. I've got his other books coming through the library interwebs, so I'll let you know if he is made of consistent rocketropolis, or merely hit or miss faux-rockitudinology.

Rock on.

Heroes of History: Carl Sagan

I get so tired of cynicism, even in myself. It's so easy to say that we're going to, as a species, kill ourselves off, destroy the world, all of that, and I'll admit that I subscribe to that view myself sometimes when I run into the truly stupid members of our species. That's why, when I discovered Carl Sagan, a man who was absolutely brilliant and so obviously hopeful for us... it warmed the baseball-glove-sized radiator that I use for a heart.

Carl Sagan is not an "Obscure" Hero of History: he's really quite famous, and you've probably heard of him. Remember the movie "Contact" that came out in the mid-90's with Jody Foster? He wrote that screenplay and book. But aside from that, he's one of the most vocal and easily recognizable astronomers/scientists of the late 20th century.

He did a TV series for PBS in the late 70's called Cosmos, which had the amazing distinction of succinctly explaining just about everything modern science knew about the Universe in 13 1-hour-long episodes, and doing so in a way that a regular person could understand. You can watch them here, for free, on Hulu; I'm a couple episodes into it, and it's amazing so far.

The way he talks about us, with a bright-eyed hope and belief that, not only can we explore our world and the space outside it, we deserve to, because we're the first creatures on Earth to wonder what's out there. The series is interspersed with segments of Sagan on a space ship that looks like a dandelion seed, flying through space and observing distant galaxies and phenomena, with a childish look of glee on his face. That's the image I'll remember of him, no matter where I go: child-like wonder backed by understanding and a desire to learn about the Universe around him.

He designed a pair of plaques that were sent out of the solar system on Pioneer 10 and 11, the first craft made by man to do so. If they get picked up by aliens, which even the Catholic Church is willing to admit could possibly exist (y'know, maybe), these plaques will be their first introduction to humanity. They also pretty much provide a map on how to get back here, so here's hoping that they's friendly aliens, and not the anal-probing, War of the Worlds kind.

Regardless, this guy is just about single-handedly responsible for educating most of the public about the universe we live in. For that, he is one of my Top Ten favorite Heroes of History, right behind Walt Disney and Teddy Roosevelt and about even with Nikola Tesla.

Carl Sagan. Check him out.

Movie Monday 8: She's Out of My League - 7-out-of-10 T's

I wanted no drama this weekend: just to go out and have a laugh with some buddehs. So, instead of watching "The Green Zone" ( A.K.A. "The Bourne-Not Realicy: We swear it's not another Bourne Movie, honest"), we saw "She's Out of My League" which seems to have an actual message mixed in with it's obligatory penis jokes. And that's how I like my penis-jokes: with morals.

Jay Baruchel, who you've seen if you've seen a movie in the last few years, plays the film's hero: a slacker with a crappy family who knows he's nothing special when it comes to the dating game: he is ruled a "5" on the attractiveness scale. His last girlfriend happened a few years ago, but even though they're no longer together, she still hangs out with his family, with her new boyfriend. Awkward.

That pretty much sums Baruchel up: he does awkward better than anyone I've seen in a while, but he does it in a way that makes me laugh instead of get awkward myself and want to leave the room. None of that here.

So, along comes this girl, played by the British Aphrodite, Alice Eve, which is probably the most accurate name for a woman since forever. Seriously. She's scrumptious. Methinks I have a fallen in the loves. (I can't even write good because of her. Bah.)

She falls for him because... well, not even she can explain it. It's partially because she's tired of getting hurt by guys that are most decidedly not Baruchel, and partially because he makes her laugh, and because he just seems like a good guy. That doesn't make sense to anyone, naturally, least of all either of their friends. And here we get into, arguably, the best parts of the movie: the friends.

Baruchel's posse are the best group of comedians I've seen on screen since the crew from "Anchorman", only instead of spouting absurdity, they seem to just talk like normal guys. Only funnier.

You know how this movie ends. It has a happy ending, which absolutely has to happen if I'm going to fork over $7.25 to watch a movie, and I'm okay with that. I'm just saying, it ends like you want it too.

There is one scene... holy crap. I laughed very hard. Like, seriously. It has to do with grooming, and we'll just go ahead and say that, in this movie, Jay Baruchel has better friends than I've ever had.

This isn't a bad film. It doesn't hit the glorious, hilarious highs of, say, "The Hangover", but, as my buddy Tyler said as we left the theater: "That was probably the best chick-flick I've ever seen." I wouldn't classify this as a chick flick, but it had that vibe sometimes, and I didn't mind. I didn't leave disappointed.

New Jersey's Midnight Knitter

I promise that as far as I know, this is not a joke.

A small town in New Jersey is awakening to find their town covered in carefully knitted sleeves, covering entire portions of trees, lamp posts, payphone cords, whatever. This is my favorite kind of vandalism. And, according to the police and the mayor, "vandalism" is what it is. They're looking for this "Midnight Knitter" (who, according to what is apparently their website, call themselves "Salty Knits"), but they don't seem angry about it: the Mayor has referred to it as "fun" and "a mystery".

The people of West Cape May, NJ, seem to to like it. It's definitely better than spray paint, I'd say.

I hope they don't get into too much trouble for something that's made so many people smile.

Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day

... doesn't happen until Dec. 8, but I've fallen in love with the idea, so I will share it with my portion of the interwebs.

The Goal: to pretend to be a time traveler. Examples are thus:

1. Utopian/Cliche Future: Everything is hunky-dory in the future. We have flying cars, the world is at peace, we all wear silver jumpsuits and vacation on Mars. Payphones are beyond comprehension, and we chuckle knowingly at microwaves and cell phones.

2. Dystopian Future: The future in Terminator, or 12 Monkeys, or Mad Max: everyone has battle armor and trench coats, possibly visors, things like that. You can go several ways with this:
a.) escaped prisoner from the future, with a shaved head and barcode tattoo, wandering around like you've never seen the sky before
b.) spraypainted football pads and tattered trench coat, looking at headlines in bewilderment, or falling in front of statues (any statue) to your knees and shouting "NOOOOO" to the heavens
c.) wearing modern clothing wrong, like you've never done it before (backwards, inside out, buttoned improperly), and carrying a trinket around with a note with a phone number on it: walk up to a stranger, hand them the trinket and note and whisper "Call this number in 30 years: you'll know what to do"

3. The Past: this means just walking around in period clothing, like the old west, or Elizabethan times and talking funny, or wearing rabbit skins and running away from cars

4. Any combination of the above. The point is to make people wonder: "What just happened?"

I want to do this so bad, you have no idea.

I love it when old people play video games

I just spent an hour watching 12 people over the age of 70 compete in a Wii Bowling Tournament at our local retirement community, and I think I love that idea more than anything I've run into in the last, say, 15 minutes.

This started in 2009. Somebody donated a Wii to the Brethren Retirement Community here in Greenville, which comes with a Wii Sports disc. On that disc is Wii Bowling, and these septua- to nonagenarians (70-90 year olds, as their oldest player is 92) have really gotten into it.

I saw a woman bowl a 267 today. She missed ONE PIN. That means that out of 12 possible strikes, she got 11. That blows my mind. I can barely break 100.

I think what I like about this the most is that Nintendo has done something really extraordinary. For the last 30 or so years, technology has been in this realm where if you're past a certain age, it is more than likely beyond your comprehension. My parents still get calls from my grandparents about which remote goes to which machine. And here, Nintendo has created a system that is so advanced, and yet so simple, that someone who was born in 1918 can utilize it in a social setting. That's amazing. That's frikkin' magical, man. I thought that my parents playing Mario Kart on the N64 was as good as it was going to get, but I have never been so glad to be wrong.

This tournament was just a local one, with 5 teams. In the fall, the League is expanding to include the entire Miami Valley, which is 17 counties. Every retirement community that wishes can get involved, and some have more than one team. We'll just round that out to an even 20 teams, possibly more or less.

Each of those 20-ish teams is filled with people who witnessed the Great Depression, and are using a Japanese machine to get together and have a bowling tournament on a flat screen TV the size of a picture window.

I love "the Now".

Movie Monday 7: Alice in Wonderland - 6-out-of-10 T's

And we start using the new scale with a good example of more "Meh" than "Wow".

There was "wow" with this movie, don't get me wrong. The collection of actors, the production quality, the narrative (which gets us from points "A" to "B" very well) were all excellent, which is what saves this from being a 5 or lower.

All of the actors did a great job, which can be difficult when you're dealing with 97.23% computer generated beautifulness. This is a textbook case of actors being professional and still looking believable on green screen, which is admirable. This place is a who's-who of British actors, most of which I had to look up before it clicked that I knew who they were.

This film is glorious and creepy and gorgeous to watch. I saw it on IMAX in 3D, and I can't imagine watching it anywhere else. It would suffer without those bits, which means it will probably suffer quite a bit critically, if not financially (this will make money by the barge full).

There are parts in this movie that were completely unnecessary. For example, the Mad Hatter: it's like the people involved forced him into as many places as possible so they could have as much Depp-ness in the film as they could conceivably allow. I have no doubt in my mind that that is what happened: when you get the cash cow that is Johnny Depp, you use him as much as possible. Plus, it's a Tim Burton film; this was bound to happen.

Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen did a good job, but there's only so many times someone can yell "Off with their head" before you get really tired of it. Crispin Glover as the Knave of Hearts wasn't really given a chance to shine, he was just sort of there.

Also, *POSSIBLE SPOILERS* the entire last 10 minutes of the film were positively ridiculous. And not in the same way as the rest of it is, with Cheshire cats and Bandersnatches and Jabberwockys, but with *shudder* "futterwacken", which is a short Michael Jackson-ish dance that the Hatter does towards the end that nearly made me throw my hands to the heavens and yell "What the crap", had I not been frozen to my seat in stunned silence. Also, when Alice returns from Wonderland, she basically tells everyone at a party that they can go jump off a cliff, though she does it very politely. Then SHE GETS AWAY WITH IT, and becomes one of her dad's friend's business partners. This is Victorian England. She would have been smacked around, force fed "medicine" and bed rest (and by that I mean booze and been locked in a room), and wouldn't have been let out again until she learned how to behave herself. Also, she does a little futterwacken herself, which looked positively ridiculous and had even more WTF than the Hatter one, because she's in the real world instead of Wonderland. *END SPOILERS*

This was not a bad movie. What it was was filled with stuff that was completely unnecessary. If you can, see it in IMAX, or at least 3D. It's worth that if you like pretty things. If you have kids, they'll love it. If you like Burton-Depp films, this isn't as good as Edward Scissorhands or Corpse Bride, but it was still alright.

IN REVIEW: Better than a "meh" film, but full of baggage that drags it down. Very pretty, lots of talented people, will make crap-tons of money. Enjoyable, but still has moments when you go slack-jawed and wonder why they did that.

Movie Monday Scale: Now from 1 to 10!

I've decided to change from a 5-scale to a 10-scale due to the advice of friends (like "Why the crap do you have all those point-5's? Just use a scale of 1-to-10, moron"), and so I shall. I don't know the reasoning behind this, but it does seem a little easier to figure out how much I like something when I do it on a 10-scale. So, here's the key to understanding my ratings, with the best, middle, and worst:

10: I just crapped my pants, that movie was so awesome
5: Meh. I didn't hate it, but this wasn't a great film; maybe you could rent it
1: If poop could poop, the result of that would be more appealing than this film

The other seven numbers on a scale of 1-to-10 you should be able to figure out yourself: the closer to 10, the more awesome, the closer to 1, the more awful.

Thanks for readin'.

Obscure Heroes of History 3: Kiddo the G** D*** Cat

This is kind of a repeat, but I love this story.

Walter Wellman, who I featured in Obscure Heroes of History 1, was an adventurer who specialized in airship travel. He failed a lot, but he kept trying, which I dig about him. One of his airships was the patriotically named "The America", which he tried to use to cross the Atlantic which no one had done before. He failed again, but that's not the point.

The America was the first of its kind to feature radio equipment. It was therefore the first to send an air-to-earth radio message. Would you like to know what it was? You'll have to wait for a little more exposition.

Kiddo was a cat that belonged to a photographer on the America. I guess he didn't like the idea of leaving the little feline behind, so he brought Kiddo along... who immediately made a nuisance of himself, hollering and yowling as only an angry, claustrophobic cat can, bugging the crap out of everyone.

The first message they sent was to a secretary back on land, and was about Kiddo:

"Roy, come and get this g** d*** cat."

I frikkin' love history, guys.

Dogs in glorious slow motion

I'm gonna be gone for a few days. Hopefully, I'll still be able to blog, but if I'm not, I leave you with this. For some reason, this is amazing to me.

Movie Monday 6: Cop Out - 2-out-of-5 T's

This was the first time Kevin Smith directed a film he hadn't written himself. I say "film" because he directed the pilot episode of the now-canceled CW series, "Reaper", which he said was a horrible experience and he'd never do it again. I guess he was talking about TV, not directing other people's scripts in general.

There were funny parts. Lots of them, actually; several little skits throughout the entire film that, individually, were hilarious, and will provide the next generation of college-going partier's plenty of quotes to laugh at drunkenly (I mean that with the utmost respect: I've done my share of quoting when the time seemed right) for years to come, but this was not, at the end of the day, a good movie.

It lacked... coherence. The overlying plot, of Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan trying to hunt down a crazy valuable baseball card so Bruce can pay for his daughter's wedding, reminds me of that quote by Bilbo Baggins in Lord of the Rings: "I feel thin... like butter spread over too much bread."

That's what this movie felt like. A bunch of skits, with Morgan playing bag-tag with a 10-year-old, or Willis being... well, actually, Willis played the straight man for most of the film. Morgan did his "antics" and Bruce backed him up. Anyway, a bunch of skits, thinly tied together with a little bit of plot.

The easy thing to do here would be to make the obvious joke, calling this film a "Cop Out", but I don't think that's fair. I laughed. It was worth admission for that, I guess. I wish that the studios would have backed off and just let Smith make the film he wanted to make, which, if the original title is anything to go by ("A Couple of Dicks") would have been typical Smith-fair, and therefor gloriously hilarious.

But they didn't, and it wasn't. This is a rental, guys. Watch it with friends, though, with lots of pizza, and if you're over 21 and into that sort of thing, some beer. It will probably be much better, and a way to spend a Friday night.

The one thing, or person, that I loved unconditionally throughout the film was Sean William Scott, the guy from the trailer who asks the "Knock-knock" joke. He was great. Everything he did was hilarious. He and Smith are teaming up for their next movie, a hockey film called "Hit Somebody" which is based off a song. I hope that's good, because I would love to see what those two can do together for a whole film.