I'm old fashioned that way

I should have been born a cowboy, or in time for WWII. Back when you could punch people for being an idiot, or rude... or looking at you funny... or cause you wanted to punch them. And nobody thought twice!

I've never been good with bullies. I understand them, but my Christian-upbringing, combined with my steady diet of superhero comics, soon erased any possibility of me ever being one.

I got spanked as a kid. I was not abused, as so many people nowadays believe spanking to be synonymous with, but when I misbehaved extraordinarily, I was punished in a manner accordingly, and in a way that my young mind could easily understand.

Kids don't understand ethics. They are biologically incapable of giving two craps about anyone that isn't themselves. That's science. But what I did understand was pain. Not thumbscrews, but a whack on the bottom.

"Throwing a tantrum because mom didn't buy the Doublestuf Oreos will result in a spanking? Then perhaps I shouldn't throw a tantrum."

DING.

BAM. Goal achieved. Ethics came later, when my brain was developed enough to handle them. In the meantime, I'm not being a nuisance to my mom and the other people in Krogers.

"Shut that kid up or I'll do it for you."

Now, though, I've got to fight the notion that a sock to the jaw (or two, or a dozen) isn't exactly what some people need. Not because of the spankings, but the comics, and TV. You watch these justice shows that are all about doing things within the law... but you don't feel right until the main character plants some sweet chin music on the guy that steals from grannys.

I love the sound of sweet chin music.

But, I fight that urge because I appreciate our legal system. Is it a good system? No. Is it the best system? Yes.

Still, I hate people that say stuff about "an eye for an eye would leave everyone blind". That's straight up the dumbest thing I've ever heard: it's supposed to be a warning. How many people would you go around plucking the eyes out of if you knew you'd lose one yourself? Probably not many. (Definitely no more than two.)

Still, barring that, there are more mature ways to handle things... but that sweet chin music still holds it's appeal.

Trust me

Few things get the blood pumping like a personal attack.

I wasn't good at the game of High School. Even though I was in theater, "drama" never appealed to me, and the hobby of backstabbing isn't something I was every very interested in. I don't know if it's because I'm just not that kind of person (I hope that's the case) or if I'm just not biologically wired to want to make someone look bad. Kind of like how some people are good at certain sports: I doubt Matt Light would be any good at, say, pole vaulting.

As for me, I can't say I'd be any good at pole vaulting either. I'm also not sneaky: I'd make a terrible ninja. My idea of stealth is standing still long enough for people to forget I'm there, then surprising them with all the devastation of an earthquake. That's me: sneaky like a continent.

I don't know if you heard (or even care) about it, but recently someone called one of my articles into question. They picked a quote, said it wasn't true, then pretty much bashed me to the entire internet. The funny thing was, they're partially right; not in this case, but in general.

Try listening to someone giving a speech, or even in your next conversation. Very rarely does anyone start saying something and get directly to the point. There are "ums" and "ahs" and tangents and interruptions and flies buzzing around that need swatted. You don't want to read that in an article.

"I, uh, I want to thank you, um, all of you for *dodges mosquito* GAH, uh, all of you for being here, and for... *pause, tracking mosquito with eyes* for... *SMACK* GOT HIM! ... uh, for being here today."

No. We'd never get anything done here if we did that, if we quoted everyone completely, 100 percent verbatim. But neither do we, do I, put words in people's mouths. I am not in the habit of making up quotes. I'd be a pretty poor excuse for a reporter if I did that. But I will shorten things down so you don't look like a moron.

"I want to thank all of you for being here today."

That's a pretty extreme example. Another is the tangent, when people are reminded of something in the middle of their point and start to wander into the realm of the "what the heck" before meandering back to what they were trying to say. We don't have enough ink to do that.

My point is, you can trust me. If I do an article about you or something you care about, you can trust that I'm going to do my best on it. I am not going to lie to you about anything: it's not in my nature. When you talk to me, I will do my best to get your point across, even if you don't do that good a job yourself because of, say, a mosquito. I'm not in the business of making people look bad: I'm in the business of reporting the news.

And, so help me, if you have a problem with something I do, come to me. ME. Not the internet, not the people around you, and I'll try to fix it.

I'm no good at politics. That might come around to bite me some day, when someone who IS successfully ruins me behind my back when I'm busy getting ready to quake the earth... but if that is the case, I'll cling to this: I gave you my best. And I figure that's all anyone can ask for.

Movie Muhfriday: Inception - 9-out-of-10 T's

This movie is Christopher Nolan's reward for being awesome. And the best part is we reap many of the benefits. Lemme 'splain.

Christopher Nolan is the Director of "Inception". He also directed such Hollywood Blockbusters as, oh, "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight", and something that has a cult following because it's awesome, "Memento". These films were admittedly two of the most baddest-assiest things to ever be committed to film ever, and they made Warner Brothers 17-jillion metric crap-loads of money. As a reward for their crap-loads of cash, they were all like, "Sure, Chris, go do something fun before you do Batman 3 and re-reboot the Superman franchise (true story) for us."

He did good, he earned their trust, he gets the funding to do what he wants. And boyohboy, does he have some fun with it.

Just look at all that fun.

Inception is brilliant. It's a story with so many freaking layers that if you're not engaged the entire time you will get lost SO BAD, but it's so pretty and so much fun that you don't even mind because you WANT to be involved. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen.

One of the things I love about this is that I really had no idea what the plot was before I went in, and I'll do my darnedest not to ruin it for you. The ad-campaign for this film was... not exactly misleading, but it only gave you a taste of what was going to happen. It has to do with dreams, and the people in the movie go into other people's heads to mess with those dreams and get information.

I can't... I can't really straight up review this like I want to, as I have neither the time to do so, or, as stated, the desire to mess with what they've done. Let's just say that this is something you need to see. Probably more than once. And therein lies my single, solitary issue with this film: you need to see it more than once.

The average movie-goer is used to spoon feeding, and here you kind of have to work for what you're watching. Not that it's difficult, but there is so much going on that unless you're some kind of superhuman, you'll need to see it twice just to process it. I have no problem with that, and I'm totally going to see it again, but I work at a theater so I can do that. Joe Blow on the street probably isn't going to want to fork over another $10 to see it again, and might leave without completely understanding what he just saw.

This is minor. I don't mind. But that's why Nolan hasn't created a perfect film: you need to see it twice. Again, not that I mind, but average-movie-goer-person might.

If I hadn't sworn off decimal points, this would be a 9.9-out-of-10. But I did, so it isn't.

Watch this as soon as possible if you love thinker-movies. I loved this.

The Hetero Man-Crush

You have one. Don't even try to deny it. You might be able to if you don't know what it is, but you have one even then. If you didn't know the word 'pancreas' it wouldn't matter because you have one anyway. And just like in High School Biology when you first learned and then forgot what your pancreas does, I'm here to learn ya.

The Hetero Man-Crush is exactly that: an entirely platonic crush, which means no matter what the subject of your affections does, you're cool with and will support with more verve and fervor than you would if you weren't totally crushing on them, OMG.

It can take many forms. The least severe are forms of mild idolization: "Did you see that catch he made? That was legendary, man!" "Dude, he was so frikkin' buff in that movie, he could have strangled a lion barehanded!" "If they could figure out a way to put an engine in a bathtub, he'd still win on Indy weekend."

More severe are the hardcore fans: "They should build a statue out of solid bronze, like in Rocky or something!" "Look, he's the greatest quarterback of all time, period." "How could he not win an Oscar for that? He was WAAAAAY better than John Malkovich!"

Then, there's the straight-up crazies. There aren't any quotes for this, as any disagreement as to the sheer-goditude of their man-crush results in the sound of fist-meets-face (mostly found in sports bars).

Well, I've found mine. It took 24 years, but I found him.

BEHOLD

I think I'm somewhere in the middle on this one. Obviously, I think he's better than John Malkovich (but I don't understand why people pay that hack money to be in movies at all). Tom Selleck, on the other hand, is frikkin' legendary, and that mustache is Epic Tier.

I first saw Tom in "Three Men and a Baby", which was directed by Mr. Spock and awesome. I never saw "Magnum PI", which I'm planning to remedy soon, but apparently America agreed with me because it was one of the most critically acclaimed shows of the 80's.

America couldn't get enough of this.

How did this come about? I'll tell you.

I love westerns. I've got several dozen of them, and I'm working my way down from the more famous ("The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", "Once Upon a Time in the West", "High Noon") to the more obscure ("Beyond the Law", "Last Stand at Sabre River", "Conagher")... and that's where I found it. A three-movie Tom Selleck Western Pack.

I've watched them all. And I knew.

Now, I'm picking up everything he's ever been in ever (except "Friends" cause I freaking hated Friends when it was on TV, there's no way I'm going to buy it) that I can easily lay my hands on.

Did you know he was going to be Indiana Jones, but he couldn't get out of doing Magnum PI? Well, he COULD have, but he decided to honor his contract.

What a guy.

He's apparently pretty nice, too, and a hard worker, and everyone who's ever met him and talked about it says he's awesome. So he's not one of those nancy-boy actors who wishes they were European, and can't eat red M&M's, and if the sun is too bright they won't go outside. He's also a member of the NRA. This just gets better and better.

Do you have any idea how many pictures there are of him without a shirt on? Neither did I, but just know: it's a bunch.

So, there you go. I admit to my Man-Crush. And if anyone says anything even remotely disparaging, I will hunt you down and make you kiss a picture of his mustache.

TONY OUT.

Movie Muhtuesday Mass Review - A-Team, Eclipse, Get Him to the Greek

Oh, hey guys, how's it going?

I've determined that I'm not going to be one of those guys who blogs once every month or so. I hate those guys. (Darn guys.) So, in penance for it being so long since I last blogged atcha (it's been like a week, right? Something like that. I'm too lazy to look) here's my first MASS REVIEW!

"But Tony," you might be thinking, "those movies are already in dollar theaters, they've been out so long!" To which I say, "Yes, but SHUT UP." My time is precious, and I'm not gonna waste it on... some things.

SOME THINGS

A-Team - 7-out-of-10 T's


This flick was a good time. I have a saying when people ask me if I enjoyed something:

"If you're expecting Citizen Kane, you're going to be disappointed."

This is not Citizen Kane. This is the A-Team. This is about a group of guys who are continuously put into impossible situations, and then come out smelling like roses because they use their brains and plan stuff. Hannibal (Liam Neeson, one of my fave-rits evar) has this great line in the movie:

"Give me a minute, I'm good. Give me an hour, I'm great. Give me six months, I'm unbeatable."

I LOVE IT.

There's a bit of the film, where it's like Hannibal is passing on the planning-reigns to Face, that I didn't really dig, but he gives them back by the end. Also, there were some fight scenes that I had trouble with because they changed shots so fast, but these are minor in the grand scheme of things. This movie was fun. It explains how the A-Team got together, it's full of these characters being the characters we remember from the TV show, and there's plenty of stuff blowing up. Go to a Dollar Theater and check this out. I'd be willing to pay full price to see it again.

EXPLOSIONS!

Eclipse - 6-out-of-10 T's

I give credit where credit is due: this movie was actually decent. Was there more drama than I like? Yes. But there was valid character development, people reacted to things in ways that I understood, and there were glorious vampire-werewolf fight scenes that actually got my blood pumping a little bit.

One of my friends put it like this:

"They're getting ready to fight, and I think 'this better not suck', and then the first thing that happens is a guy punches someone's head off."

For that, I give them props.

I haven't made it that far in the books yet, but apparently when vampires die here, they break apart like marble statues. That's actually kind of cool, and a way to depict horrible violence and still get a PG-13 rating. Good thinking. I gives more props.

This is the first movie in the series that actually kept me engaged, and that I didn't want to burst out laughing at. I'd see this again. I'd rather watch, y'know, Terminator 2 or something, but I'd watch this again.

Get Him to the Greek - 8-out-of-10 T's


I laughed so hard at this. It's rowdy, it's raunchy, it shows all the debauchery that occurs in the world of a rock star, and it does it with a character I already know and like (Aldous Snow, played by Russell Brand, who first showed up in Forgetting Sarah Marshall). He's off the wagon now, and he fell off HARD.

In an effort to revive his flagging career after the release of a bad album (Called "African Child", which one reviewer referred to as "The third worst thing to happen to Africa after Famine and War"), he's doing an anniversary concert at the Greek Theater, which is in California. The dude who came up with the idea, played by Jonah Hill, has to get this off-the-wagon rock star from England to New York (to pimp to show) to California. Snow causes as much trouble along the way as possible, and it's hilarious... and sometimes scary.

Something I wasn't expecting was to actually see the downside of the lifestyle. When Hill pop's Snow's balloon-o'-heroin, Snow gets really angry. Like, junkie angry. Completely unexpected.

But, of course, this is first and foremost a comedy, and in that aspect it does not disappoint. I've already seen it twice. Another pleasant surprise was that the music was actually really good. I bought the album, which is filled with horrible single-entendre (which is like double entendre but without the effort spent on hiding), but you want to sing along with it (which I admit I totally do in the comfort of my car).


This is yet another raunchy comedy, and it's totally worth paying to see. Check it out.

And that was mah first Mass Review. Hopefully, this won't become a regular thing, but if it must, it must. Thanks for reading, and take your vitamins.

Of bulbs and explosions

This is a high pressure xenon bulb. It gets crazy bright, and crazy hot. They are what is used in the projector at the movie theater that I manage. These guys don't just break, they straight up explode. If you are around during the explosion, I hope you enjoy the feeling of glass embedded in your skin.

Last night, one of them blew up.

Not this, but close.

Yesterday, the temperature was rather high, and we don't have air conditioning in the box office part of the theater. As one of my employees put it, "It's blazin'." BLAZIN' INDEED.

Beginning at 9 a.m., the temperature didn't drop below 80 degrees Fahrenheit until after 11 p.m. My theory is that the heat of the day slowly destabilized the structural integrity of the xenon bulb, and then the sweet, sweet, red-hot necrophilic obsession that was happening onscreen (we're playing "Eclipse") ended up being too much for it, and it asploded.

Poor little guy never stood a chance.

Last night was more exciting than I wanted it to be, but whatevs.

Trading a strong fist for a helping hand?

I love the idea of this, but my inner skeptic is banging on the walls and calling me a moron: the Navy has converted two supertankers into hospital ships that travel to developing and third-world nations to provide free medical care, the USNS Comfort and Mercy. Both of them are "900-ft.-long modified oil tankers with triage bays, surgical wards, and 1,000 patient beds. To give you an idea of how big that is, each ship is nearly on par with Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in scale."

The rainbow is a bit much, I think.

This is all an effort to work against the bad reputation we've gotten over the last decade or so, and while these ships are Navy ships, neither of them carry any ordinance, and firing on them is considered a war crime.

Basically, what they're going for is a new strategy called "soft power": instead of going in, cowboy style with guns a-blazing and beating the crap out of anyone who looks at us funny (which is my first instinct in any situation, I'll admit, and which has served us so well in Iraq), they go to war-torn nations that aren't at war with us and assist in any way they can. We're doing our darnedest to make a good impression.

This is the Comfort in Haiti, where it is right now.

This is the very definition of what they taught us to do in Sunday School: love others, help those less fortunate, assist with no expectation of repayment (other than, you know, maybe not being 9/11'd again some time in the future, thanks), and then disappear mysteriously into the night (that was Sunday School, right? No, wait, that was from Batman...). That's why I love it.

"We're like ninjas that heal, instead of kill stuff."

Why I hate it is because of my inherent xenophobia (fear of anything alien or different, which has been bred into us since we were living in caves), which is something I hate in myself. But, I can see this coming around and biting us on the bum; it all goes back to the basics of human interaction. Do we try to make friends and create peace that way, or do we try to be strong enough so that no one is capable of hurting us? I see the appeal of both... but I'll admit, I'd probably sleep a little better with the second one. And that ticks me off.

I believe that human beings are basically evil, that we need to work against our natures to become good (the concept of "original sin"). Children need to be taught not to steal, to share, to not be selfish, because those things are what we naturally do without the outside influence of those that raise us. And I want to believe that an effort to give, to share, to assist those around us in an attempt to make friends is one that will reward us in the long run.

I have decided to take this tickedoffedness I feel and funnel it into support of this idea, to use the negative emotions that my stupid human nature insists I feel and use it to fuel support for something good. I am afraid that by helping these people, we might be fostering the notion that we are weak, which could open us up for conflict in the future, and THAT CANNOT BE. This is a truly great thing that our military is doing, and this is the right thing to do with our resources, so screw my stupid fear. Way to go, Navy.

Few things are more stereotypically American than this picture.

Oz-ZNA: the key to humanity's immortality

Apparently, Ozzy Osbourne's genetics might hold the key to finding out why he's still as together as he his after decades of drugs and World of Warcraft, when so many other rock stars and everyday folks have succumbed to death's sweet embrace.

Though not entirely unscathed, is our dear Ozzy.

Really.

I mean, yeah, okay, he's still alive, but there are three people on the planet who understand anything he says, and I even doubt those three. Sharon could be making up everything when she translates for him, and we'd never know the difference, and he probably wouldn't either.

He put it on his knuckles in case he forgot, I guess.

But, credit where credit is due: I think he's still breathing, and that something that John Belushi, Steve Clark, Paul Butterfield, and about 13 bazillion other musicians/famous people cannot claim.

What I can't believe is that someone put these things together and thought this would be a good idea to spend money on. Apparently Ozzy is paying to have his DNA mapped out, which I get, because he's a frikkin' rock star and the Prince of Darkness and wipes with £100 bills (or whatever they call money in London... notes? Eh.) but there's a group of people who are going to be toiling over Ozzy's helixes day and night to see if there's a correlation between him being NOT DEAD and whether or not his DNA has anything to do with it.

I actually hope there kind of is. How awesome would that be: the front man for Black Sabbath has some kind of genetic mutation that could make humanity immune to disease, or maybe make us think bats are delicious.

Or frogs.

Someone get the man something to chew on! Please!

Or something.