Havasimy

Last night, Bill and I went to a bar to see a country band whose lead singer we knew growing up. The band's name is Unbridled. The performance was really good. Lindsy sang great and with enthusiasm despite the audience being not very, well, existent at first. It's not easy singing with energy when people are just sitting there. The audience warmed up eventually. The bass player sounds exactly like Willie Nelson when they sang the one Willie song. The only complaint I really had was that they did too many Shania songs for my taste, but it was a great night. We might go see them again on Saturday night.

I've mentioned it in the past that I am an occasional guest on a sports talk show. In the past, I was host of the show as well as the station's Sport Director. This year I'm going to try and make more of an effort to attend the shows. It's called sportsline and it on at Tuesday nights at 10pm. If you're close by Pittsburgh, you can hear it on 88.3 FM and if you're not, you can listen to it online at the WRCT website.

I've been meaning to remind people of this after the show started up again after the Christmas break, but forgot. What reminded me was our producer for the last couple years who just recently left to concentrate on real work forwarded an email that said one of my successors to hosting duties and, as of last year, also an active participant in the show will not be on the show right now because he's running for representive to the state legislature. More so, he's running in the district that I currently live in. In other words, I get the option to vote for someone I know personally. Now Brad is younger than I am and when I meant him as a freshman, he wasn't the most mature person I've met, but that was years ago. He's motivated and basicly a good and decent guy. That deserves atleast a mention on this blog. It will probably get my vote too, although, I still need to examine his platform more. Anyway, his website is here if anyone is curious.

The other movie I saw yesterday was The Adventures of Pluto Nash. I got it through Netflix so I paid for it but I didn't really pay for it. I didn't see any bad reviews for this movie. That's because I didn't see any reviews for it. It was barely in theatres and they didn't screen it for critics and, since critics and the media outlets they work for it are cheap, no critics reviewed it. Hence, all I knew about the movie was that it starred Eddie Murphy as a nightclub owner on the moon, Rosario Dawson as the female lead and Randy Quaid as a robot.
First of all, the movie wasn't that bad. Studios put out, screen, and heavily publicize a lot worse. The plot reminded me of a late-night cable non-erotic mob-type action movie. Murphy, a legendary-smuggler-turned-club-owner, won't sell his place to the big casino owner/mob boss so they blow up the club and try to kill him. This takes him, Dawson, and Quaid on a adventure through some of his old smuggler's haunts.
Of course, in most movies, the setting is the underbelly of a major city. Here's the setting is the underbelly of a major city crossed with the set of Total Recall and the New York New York casino in Las Vegas.
The big surprises to me where what other name actors showed up in the movie. Besides three mob guys being played by guys who played similar roles on The Sopranos, including Joey Pants, there was Jay Mohr as a night club entertainer, Luis Guzman as a smuggler, James Rebhorn (you might not know the name, but his face will be familiar) as the mob's second-in-command, Peter Boyle as a old crony of Murphy, Pam Grier as Murphy's mother, Illeana Douglas as a doctor at a body altering place, John Cleese as the computerized chauffeur of a flying car, and, in a (thanking his lucky ass) uncredited role, Alec Baldwin as a mob boss. You could also almost give Kevin Spacey a credit because Quaid looks like Kevin Spacey in his Dr. Evil make up from Austion Powers in Goldmember.
The special effects aren't quite cheesy, but they're not good either. The plot is standard. I give the movie a "wait til it's on cable" on the TH movie scale. Basicly, it's watchable but I wouldn't pay for it.

I saw two movies yesterday.

The first one was Something's Gotta Give, starring Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton. I knew my mom's been wanting to see it and I thought it looked really good, so I decided to spend the quality family time and take her to see it. It was really good and really funny, although at just over two hours long, it could have been shorter. Anytime a comedy is over two hours, there will be times that it drags and that is the case here.
The movie was written specifically for Keaton and Nicholson and I'm not sure anyone else could play it. Jack plays Jack. His character is basically Jack Nicholson, or at least, the public persona of Jack Nicholson. He never dates anyone over thirty and, despite being sixty-three years old, he has never been married. (He was once engaged to Diane Sawyer in the distant past, though.) The two main characters meet when Nicholson is dating Keaton's daughter. Nicholson has a heart attack which allows for two key plot points: it forces him to stay at Keaton's beach house rather than go back to the city and it allows the doctor, played by Keanu Reeves to keep showing up in the story. Reeves falls for Keaton immediately. Nicholson and Keaton do the standard "I hate you... I hate you... I love you..." situation that is standard for a romantic comedy, but they do it in by far more realisticly than I've ever seen it done in any other movie. The hate is never true extreme, as most movies would have it be, and they are not as opposite as they first seem, allowing for the attraction to grow as the similarities are revealed. Reeves does his usual acting job, which works well for his "puppy dog in love" doctor. And the ending keeps you guessing.
The Keaton nude scene has gotten alot of attention, but the scene is quick and done with low lighting and kinda at a distance. I wish I could say the same with Nicholson butt-hanging-out-of-a-hospital-robe scene.
Anyway, on the TH movie scale, I give it a "pay full price" if you want a subtle comedy or if there's nothing else you want to see playing, otherwise "pay matinee price".

As my faithful reader know, I'm currently unemployed. I put in every two weeks for the compensation. I call into an automatic system. I was supposed to call in sunday, but didn't remember til late. Turns out, the automatic system is only up during business hours. What's the point in having a system that doesn't require people and then only have it working during the day? That's just dumb. And it was annoying cause I had to wait til monday morning and I had to deal with the busy signals that come when everybody tries calling at once.

If you want a old movie to watch that is really great and timely considering this is an election year, might I suggest The Manchurian Candidate. It's an excellent movie starring Frank Sinatra. I don't want to give the plot away, but it deals with politics and communism. Also, don't watch it unless you watch all of it. If you miss the first ten minutes or so, you'll almost definitely have trouble understanding what's happening.
Also, I just recently learned that they're doing a remake starring Denzel Washington in the Sinatra role, Liev Schreiber in the other male lead and Meryl Streep in the mother role that Angela Lansbury was just amazing in. Jonathan Demme is directing. Usually remakes of great movies make me cringe, but this is looking to be an exception. It will, however, all turn on how they update the communist angle since communist is not the polarizing issue in America that it once was. But during an election year, it will be a must-see.

One of my favorite commercials currently on is for the Ragu's meaty spaghetti sauce. It has Joe Theismann, Joe Frazier (I think. It's definitely an older boxer.) and Joe Piscopo living together and just being totally messy. It has the tagline "Sloppy Joes?" Then, it ends with "Joe Millionaire" (Evan Marriott?) knocking on the door and the Joes saying "I don't think so".

I saw Runaway Jury at the cheap theatre last night. I'd give it a pretty good review. On the TH movie scale, it's at least a "pay matinee price" with the three main lead roles bringing it up to a "pay full price".
If you haven't seen it, you might not want to read the next paragraph. I give away a spoiler, although, I think it was obvious early that this would be the outcome and the real twists come via other devices.
They switch the setting from a tobacco company trial in the book to a gun maker trial in the movie. When the verdict was read, one or two people in the theatre clapped. I couldn't help but laughed. The verdict would be appealled and, based on a couple things that would come out, it would most likely get thrown out. The movie makers obviously knew this too since they threw in a twist that was the true victory in the movie.

Does anyone know if there's anything wrong or dangerous about having two standard home microwave stacked one on top of another with both running at the same time?

I got the movie Swimming Pool on dvd on the basis of great critic's reviews I have read. The movie was really good. It's a art house type film, but on the TH movie scale, I give it a "pay full price". The thing is, it has a trick ending. It wasn't a surprise cause I caught a couple clues to it early in the film, but the movie doesn't explain the ending. The movie kind of leaves it to the viewer to figure it out. I'm pretty sure I have it figured out, but when I try to confirm it via the internet, all I can find are reviews and the critics that write them don't want to spoil the ending so they only allude to it. So if anyone has seen it, let me know what you're interpretation is.

One thing I forgot to write about last time was something I noticed when Tiff and I went to see Big Fish. The movie theatre we went to has stadium seating and they don't lower all the house lights entirely during the movie. They keep a couple of the side lights on very dim. I guess it's so that there's not total darkness at times in a movie that the screen goes very black. However, they are not bright enough to affect the viewing of the movie. In fact, unless you happen to look up at the side walls, you might not even realize that the lights are on. Tiff and I sat in seats on the side of the theatre. During the movie, I happen to look up at the near wall and noticed that there was the silhouette of a security camera in the light. There was a camera attached to the wall right beside the light such that it stuck out directly between me and the light. The camera was pointed out at the audience. This makes me wonder if they're keeping a eye out for bootleggers, troublemakers or simply people eating outside food. Probably all three. My guess, though, taking into account times when there were problems in the theatre I was attending is that they don't monitor all the cameras at all time. Consider the theatre is right next to , to quote springsteen, "a part of town where if you hit a red light you don't stop" (okay, it's not that bad, but I wouldn't want to be walking through there at night), it's possible they don't monitor the feed. They might just want it to use if something does happen.

Yesterday something amazing happened. Those who are familiar with Carnegie Mellon University can back me up on this. At about 2pm yesterday afternoon, I found a parking spot along Frew St. Not only was there a open spot, there were two within about five spots of each other. I've never seen an open spot there during the day. And, even better, there was enough time on the meter to go to 6pm when parking becomes free.

And finally, a entry that essentially ties together the last two posts. I recently got a movie from Netflix. It was double-sided with full screen on one side and wide screen on the other.

I put the wide screen side in my dvd in my living room. When I looked on the special features menu, it just had the commentary. I figured it was a similar case to "True Lies" where it should only say "special feature". The abscence of a trailer was suspicious, though, because, like I said, it's the bare minimum special feature. It's so easy to add to a dvd that even cheesy B-movies usually have a trailer.

Later on, I took it up to my bedroom where I had my portable dvd player hooked to my tv. Because of its primary function isn't to be hooked up to a tv, it doesn't always act right. Often wide screen movies still play as full screen on the tv. So I just decided rather than deal with that, I'd just play the full screen side of the dvd. I flipped to the special features menu and it had THREE PAGES of special features. It had a ton of featurettes on the stunts and the costumes. It had trailers and even a teaser trailer for the sequel. This just mystified me. You go through all the trouble to collect all the features and design the menus and stuff, how hard can it be to stick it on the other side as well.

Now for commentary on dvd that is less of a rant and more of an observation. I got True Lies on dvd. It's a great movie. I selected "Special Features" from the main menu and all I found was the trailer.

First of all, since there was just one thing on the special features menu, it should have been listed as "Special Feature" and not featureS.

Of course, considering how many special effects and action sequences there were, at least a "making of" featurette would have been nice. A trailer is bare minimum when it comes to dvd special features.

I'm not sure if I ranted on this subject recently here, but I'm too lazy to go back and look, so if I'm repeating myself, oh well...

If there's one person or group of people that I truly despise it's the person/people who make the decision to release a dvd or dvd set with two seperate versions: one wide screen and one full screen. I personally do not like full screen. If I'm watching the movie, I want to see what was on the movie screen. I want to see it as the director intended. I don't want a third of the screen removed just because some people don't like to see black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. My view of full screen being evil has lessened a little since I played Chicago for my parents and my mom just couldn't get use to the black bars. So if the bars annoy someone and they don't mind having a cropped picture, then fine. Make the full screen available. Just put them both in the same package so there's no confusion.

On my birthday this past summer, my brother and his wife got me the movie Daredevil. This was great since it was a movie I wanted to own but didn't particularly want to pay for. Daredevil also has good special features and makes good use of dvd abilities including an additional audio track that describes all the action and everything that can be seen on screen, so a blind person could listen to that track and it would be able to follow the movie almost as well as a person watching it. But my brother got me the full screen, so I had to take it back and exchange it. He got it at Wal-Mart and to their credit, the store gave me absolutely no problem or hassle exchanging it.

This fall, I picked up a used widescreen copy of Austin Powers in Goldmember at the local Electronic Boutique. They have a good deal where, if you buy a card for ten bucks you get ten percent off of any used movies or games for a year. When I got home and played the movie, it started with the notice that the movie had been formatted to fit my screen. Apparently, I got the wide screen box, but when the clerk fetched the dvd from the back, he grabbed the full screen version. There was no problem exchanging it, but still, I had to make a extra trip to the store.

And then there was this winter. My parents and I went X-Mas shopping at Wal-Mart. I went away from them for a moment to get something, and when I came back, I found them near the electronics trying to hurry up and hide something in the cart. It was the Indiana Jones Trilogy. My dad tried to throw me off the track by saying how they were out of the Godfather Trilogy (the other dvd set I wanted). Finally, they admitted they had picked out the Indy trilogy for me. So we went through the checkout and as we're walking out of the store - we were through only the first of the two set of doors - my mom goes, "You wanted full screen, right?" So, about a minute after checking out, I was exchanging the set for the wide screen version. Once again, Wal-Mart gave me no hassle exchanging a item for a nearly identical (and priced identical) item.

Of course, all three things would not have happened if they didn't put out two different set where the only difference is full screen/wide screen.

After watching the making of the three Indiana Jones movies that came with the trilogy on dvd, the thing that struck me most was that Harrison Ford might just be the coolest actor ever. They show him handling snakes with no problem. He had major back pain but still went on trying to do his scenes until Spielberg finally had him go get treatment. And when it came to the scenes with rats, it not bother him. He actually had pet rats when he was younger.

In my personal life, nothing much has changed from last week. I'm still looking for a job. Headhunters have put my resume at a few more places and I'm submitting more resumes through Monster.com today. I decided when I got laid off that I wasn't going to limit my job search to the Pittsburgh area. My resume has been submitted by recruiters to places in Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York. The more I think about it the more I hope I don't get offered a job out of state. A part of me thinks it would be good for me to leave the area, at least for a short time. The longest, I believe, I've been out of the western PA area is less than 20 days. The longest I've been out of the area was a little over two weeks when I visited my brother in Hawaii, so spending some time away from here would do me some good, but the more I think about it, the more I don't want to leave the area. I like it here. I have friends here and all my family is here. So, right now, the best case scenario is for me to be offered a job around the Pittsburgh area so I won't have to make the decision. I think that's the thing that I don't want to do the most. I don't want to have to decide.

I saw the movie Big Fish this past weekend. It was great. I really liked it. It had a fairy tale quality to it. That's about the best way I can describe it. A fairy tale made for adults. It's a tale about the relationship with a dying man and his son. The man always told long stories that everyone loved except his son who has grown weary of them. The man was never around and most of the movie is told in flashbacks of the man's adventures. The stories seem impossible. They include a town where nobody leaves, a traveling circus with assorted "freaks" and a witch who could show people how they were going to die. The movie is also a love story between the man and his wife. It includes him catching his first sight of her and everything else just freezing in space. Alison Lohman and Jessica Lange both play the wife and it is the best case of one actress playing the younger version of another actress in flashbacks and very much looking the part I've seen since Mila Kunis played the younger version of Angelina Jolie in Gia.
Generally, when people ask my opinion of a movie currently in theatres, my ranking system is based on how much I'd pay to see it. Rankings generally go from seeing it multiple times in the theatre (X-Men), paying full price to see it in the theatre (Bad Santa), pay matinee price to see it in the theatre (Cheaper By The Dozen), $1 theatre (Scary Movie 3), wait til it's on dvd/netflix (The Matrix Reloaded), wait til it's on cable (Alex and Emma), and, finally, watch on cable only if nothing else is on (Charlie's Angels).
Big Fish definitely gets a solid "pay full price".

They've announced the line-up of the Survivor All-Star edition. Considering I followed the first one via day-after interviews on the CBS morning show, watched the second one only up to when Amber got voted off and haven't cared much for any of them since, I was pleased with the line-up. My favorites made it. They include the local girls, Amber and Jenna M. They also include the character that I, apparently, was the only one who liked. I was rooting for Jerri Manthey her first time around. Okay, at first it was because I had her in the survivor pool at work, but she kinda grew on me. She made her share of mistakes at first and she likes to say exactly what she thinks (often an admirable quality in real life, but can be fatal on Survivor) but what what I could tell in post-survivor interviews, the editing of the show made it seem worse than it was. Ever since I watched the first season of The Real World, I realize that editing often messed with the televised view of "Reality". Also, The Real World soon made clear that producers love conflict and will spin it so that there will never be a "everyone is friends" group together on any reality show. Getting back to the Survivor All-Stars, I was also glad to see Elizabeth from the second season of survivor declined to take part. She's not that bad on her post-survivor gigs, but she ignored the living crap out of me when she was on survivor. Her and Tina were the reasons I stopped watching after Jerri and Amber got voted off. Everyone said that Jerri was the two-faced one on that show. I thought a number of people were worse, especially Tina. Jerri just made the mistake of not hiding it.

It wouldn't surprise me if PETA or one of their more militant splinter groups had a hand in the current mad cow happening in the U.S. Of course, a lot of cows might be slaughtered because of it, but anytime meat are linked to a disease in the press, the more ammunition they have to get people to turn vegetarian. Of course, the cow turned out to be older than the regulations about cow feed that essentially negate any chance of mad cow spreading in the U.S., but I simply wouldn't put it past PETA to cause a mad cow outbreak so people will be scared into going veggie. This is the same organization that put up a tasteless Santa sex billboard (seen here at Chuck's website) and there campaign to make kids think their mothers will kill their pets (check out the pdf of the pamphlet. If I had kids and someone tried giving one to them, I'd take it and shove it so far down their... um, guess they're lucky I don't have kids.)

Anyway, I'm going to continue eating meat, no matter what disease is found. If necessary I'll stick to local beef, but I've never let any report on how a food is unhealthy affect my eating before and I don't plan on starting now. In fact, in support of the beef industry, I suggest that the next time you all go out to eat or go to the grocery store, pick out a nice juicy steak.

A attorney was on one of those entertainment news programs. He said that Britney Spear's now non-husband has thirty days to appeal the annulment of their wedding and try to get a divorce. If he does and succeeds, he'll be entitled to whatever she made during that 50+ hours span of their wedding. If you consider royalties for her albums and the songwriting royalties (ha ha. I'm sorry. her songwriting so far has consisted of her humming a piece of a tune and real songwriters writing music and lyrics around it. Then they bury it at the end of her albums where noone will hear it.) In addition, she'll be forever stuck with having a failed marriage. With the annulment, she can honestly claim she has never been married. Miss Spears has better be nice to this guy for the next four weeks. He holds the ability to be a major pain in her ass. Then again, from what I could tell from the one interview I've seen of the guy, she still has him wrapped around her finger.

Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane have signed on to do a movie version of the musical "The Producers" based on the movie "The Producers". I actually like the idea of this. As far as I'm concerned, it's essentially a remake of the movie, just indirectly done. It could be the first case of a good remake being done of a good movie.

In the state of Ohio, there was lottery controversy. One woman claimed she bought a winning lottery ticket but lost it, probably when her purse spilled out when she walked out of the store. She said the numbers were birthdates/ages of her children. She even filed a police report for a lost ticket. Now, she never claimed it was stolen, just lost. I didn't realize you can file a report for a lost item, unless, of course, the item is a child. The police said that her story sounded believable. I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, as long as her story wasn't proven false.
By benefit of the doubt, I mean feeling both sorry for her and laughing at her for losing a multi-million dollar lottery ticket.

Then, another woman came out with the winning ticket. She had the ticket in her possession, so no matter what, by lottery rules, she gets the money. She also claims she has played those numbers for every big jackpot for about two years. She held a receipt for another purchase that was timestamped the same time as the ticket was bought (not much proof since she would have had to been at the store about the same time to find the lost ticket) and atleast one old ticket where she had played the same numbers for a previous lottery.

I'm sorry, the first woman has officially lost the benefit of my doubt. Now, the first woman has hired a attorney to stop the second woman from getting the money. I'm sorry. Even if woman #2 had found the ticket, woman #1 had no claim to the money. Most likely, she hired the attorney to keep the act up so she won't get charged with writing a false police report. The police should just put an end to it by telling her that if she gives up the charade, they won't press charges. Also, if woman #2 did find the ticket, she should give some of the money (a couple hundred thousands maybe. She took the lumpsum of sixty-something million), but only if woman #1 doesn't pursue the money through the court. And she shouldn't even make the offer until she sees that woman #1 doesn't pursue it. Of course, if she did buy the ticket and not find it, she should fight the first woman as hard as it takes and even go for court costs.

There are some songs that you can't help to like even though you really want to dislike them. A song that is like that is on the heavy rotation on pop radio station right now. It's "Milkshake" by Kelis. It's a song that's I can't help to like despite the fact that it's a hollow manipulative song in the style of "Whoop there it is". People can't help to sing along with the chorus but, with the exception of maybe the first line of the first verse, nobody ever remembers any actual word from any of the verses.

Now the big question is when will we start hearing it in tv ads. Anyone want to start a pool on which company uses it first. My guess is Dairy Queen, unless McDonalds starts a campaign to push their shakes.

I wrote all the blog entries today at Tiff's. I came over to her place to wait for a package to her she had to sign for since she couldn't be here since she finally has a job. Anyway, just want to thank Tiff for letting me you her internet connection. Tiff also wants me to write about how nice and generous she is, but I'm not good at typing with a straight face.

One thing that bugs me about the baseball hall of fame voting. There seems to be a big deal made about getting in on the first ballot, like it's should be a special honor. I read sports columnist who are also voters writing about how they think so-and-so should be in the hall of fame, but not the first time they are eligible. Some talk how they're not going to vote for a player this year, but plan on doing so next year, not because there are more deserving players, but because they don't think they deserve to get in their first time. This makes absolutely no sense to me. If a player is deserving one year, he should be deserving every year and if he isn't, he shouldn't be every year. I can understand if a voter takes another look at the player and honestly changes his mind about the voting, but these guys are simply saying they are not going to be deserving this year but they are next year. The voting should be done based on the players' careers. Eligible Players are retired. Their careers are not changing and they won't be changing. How long they have been eligible should have no say in the matter.

I thought I would throw in my two cents on the whole Pete Rose thing. I think he should be in the hall of fame. His stats and his reputations, I feel, should put him there. The gambling shouldn't keep him out. I mean, if a current hall-of-famer were to be discovered to have gambled late in his career, would they kick him out? But I don't think he should be reinstated to baseball. He should be allowed to coach or take part in most league events. They should allow him to do the hall induction ceremony and then banned from any other official events unless given specific permission by the commissioner, which would be rare.

I got a hot air popper for Christmas. It's shaped like a little popcorn cart. As anyone gotten one of these. It's great except for one thing. The instructions say that if you put too little in, it will cause too many unpopped kernels to fly out. If you put too much, it will cause burning and scorching. Well, I put the correct amount of popcorn in it before I start. Once things get popping, the force of the popping cause about a quarter of the yet-to-be-popped kernels to fly out. I even try putting more popcorn in that the instructions says. Percentage-wise, there were slightly less unpopped kernels, but still there was a significant amount. Also, some of the kernels started getting burnt slightly. And the thing shot both popped and unpopped kernels out so hard that they would bounce in and out of the bowl causing me to have to clean popcorn off of the floor. I think I need to get popcorn that is not quite as explosive.

A brief overview of the movies/dvds I've seen recently:

The Return of the King was good, although I think the first half of it should have be cut down a little. I made the mistake of going to see it when I was tired and was fighting (and not always winning) sleep the first half of the movie and I didn't feel like I missed anything. And although everything is well done, I think I'm tiring of movie sword fights. It seems like between movies in the theatres and dvds, I've seen a ton of sword fights the past year or two. I think I'm getting bored with them.

Cheaper by the Dozen was a watchable family comedy, but at times was kind of slow and depressing. It also didn't manage the fourteen main characters well. See Love Actually for a movie that does that well .And pretty much everything related to the dad's job as the head coach of a major college football team is unrealistic. I didn't expect realism, but, come on, they made it seem like a college football team is made up of just 20 or so players who have no qualms with chasing after the coach's kids. One funny moment, though, was a uncredited Ashton Kutcher, playing a wannabe actor, worries about possible damage to his face admits that he's not a good actor and that his looks are the only thing he has going for him.

I got the Indiana Jones Trilogy on dvd for Christmas. One thing I was interested in seeing was the screen test with Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones. Originally, Steven Spielberg wanted Harrison Ford, but George Lucas already had him in two of his movies and didn't think it wise for people to think that Ford was to be in every one of his movies (or something like that), so they went with Tom Selleck who ended up not doing it because the tv show Magnum P.I. got picked up. So they ended up going with Ford. So the screen test is on the dvd and it was basicly Magnum P.I. wearing Indy's fedora. But the interesting thing was the actress he was doing the screen test with was Sean Young. They also so the screen test of Karen Allen opposite Tim Matheson. I'm sorry. I just can't picture Matheson as Indiana Jones. The other interesting thing was that the first choice for Sallah was Danny Devito. That would have made the movie different.

Finally, I got the dvd set of the now-cancelled tv show Firefly. Firefly is a amazing, great sci-fi tv series. Unfortunately, they don't fare well on network tv shows. This could become a hit if it was able to move to the sci-fi channel. The premise is basicly a western in space. Even more so than the original Star Trek was. Planets away from the more established planets have been changed to be able to sustain human life, with the outcome being desert-like environments. Then the colonists are dropped off without much more than the clothes on their back, so they live not-unlike people in the old west. The action centers on the crew of the Serenity. Think the Millenium Falcon with a bigger crew. The captain fought on the losing side of the great interplanetary civil war. He's now jaded and a skeptic. His first mate fought with him in the war. There's a pilot who's married to the first mate, a mechanic who has no real training but a natural gift and can basically talk to the ship, a mercenary who isn't that smart or trustworthy, a prostitute (which is a respected profession), a priest with a secret past and, finally a doctor and his mentally-disturbbed sister who are wanted by the government because of her powers. They travel around making a living doing jobs that are usually less than legal. The show was created by Joss Whedon and has the same great writing as his other shows, Buffy and Angel. If you're a fan of science fiction or just great television, rent/buy/borrow this dvd set.

Happy New Years everyone. I took a break from blogging and job searching, but now I'm back and I'm stepping up my job search so I should be logged on more often. Nothing too interesting happened to me over the holidays. The past few weeks have flew by. A bunch of thing happened in the news that I had opinions on, but I never wrote anything down, so most of what I was thinking, you readers are spared from reading.