Havasimy

Reading a online entertainment column, I found a link to a movie poster site, more specificly this page on the site, which shows this glimpse of Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka:


I loved the idea of Tim Burton doing "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" ever since I first heard about it and this leads me to believe it'll live up to my expectations.

Then I started to look at other upcoming movie posters on the site. I found this one, which I immediately added to my must-see movie list:


And the must-see became stronger when I saw the one they had for the same movie only featuring Bruce Willis.

***Note(11-17-04): It seems that, for some reason, on my computer at work that the images I inserted into this post aren't showing up. But when I put the image url directly into the browser I can see them, then when I hit back to the blog, they now appear. Maybe it's because I use IE at work and Netscape at home. Anyway, here are the URLs to the images, in case there are no images above in this post.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Sin City

I'm usually not a fan of dead celebrities used in commercials, but I really like the new Mustang commercials with Steve McQueen and the racetrack in the cornfield.

I love the smell of donuts in the morning. Smells like... victory.


When I first started working at my current company this summer, one guy at work found out I was a Steelers fan and proposed a donut bet for the Steelers-Eagles regular season game. He once again proposed it last week. I accepted. So this morning, a dozen donuts showed up on my desk.

I watched the game on Sunday at a bar surrounded by Eagles fans. The manager of the bar suggested that I could escape out the backdoor of the place if my life got put into jeopardy. Turns out the Eagles got their asses kicked and the fans accepted defeat long before the game ended. I think they appreciated the fact that I didn't gloat. I didn't even cheer too loud when they scored. Anyway, going against reputation, the Eagles fans were civil.


On another note, Desperate Housewives still hasn't disappointed. This week's episode offered the best spittake I've seen in a long time. What happened was, the hot housewife is having coffee at the kitchen table of one of the other housewives when the other housewive's teen daughter comes in with the teenaged guy that the hot housewife is having an affair with. The hot housewife said to the other one that she didn't know the two teens were friends. The other one replied that they were both members of the abstinence club just as the hot one takes a drink. Cue spittake.

I'm having a relatively productive weekend. I had friday off but worked a couple hours in the morning to make up for a lunch out with co-workers on Thursday that stretched to three hours. After work, I got on the subway a few blocks from my place to do a dry run to the Amtrak station. I had to transfer once, but I didn't even have to walk outside the subway station to transfer. If I didn't feel like walking to the subway station, I even could take a train from the block next to my place to the station to catch the first subway train. It was a easy enough ride at about the same time I'll be heading to the Amtrak station when I go home for thanksgiving. I still don't know if I'll be taking the subway back home. It'll be later at night. I might just spring for a taxi on the return trip.

Today, I went up to exercise in my building's workout room. Usually, I go exercise late at night. I decided not to go last night and go today instead. I went up about 9am and it was busy. Usually, I'll see at most one person. This morning two out of the four eliptical type machines were being used and three out of the four treadmills were being used (the fourth had someones keys on it). There also people using weights. Plus there were atleast two tvs on, showing different channels. I noticed one was a music channel and I think that one was on mute. Sportscenter was on the other and I had already watched that earlier. So I decided to skip the workout.

I later cleaned the bathroom. The bathroom at my new place has a few things that I find annoying. One, there is no counter space. It's a old-fashioned type stand-alone sink. If you have seen my toothbrush holder at my last place, it's like that. Two, no counter space means no under-counter cabinet to keep the cleaning supplies. Third, everything is white, so if it's not clean, it's very noticeable that it's not clean.

Tomorrow, I'll be watching the Eagles/Steelers game at a bar surrounded by Philly fans. A couple guys there already know me as a Steelers fan, so I'm going to get some crap tomorrow. It'd be safer for me to stay home or go to a different place, but they've won fours games when I watched the game there and lost one when I watch it at home. I don't want to risk losing the luck.

I saw the movie "Ray" last week. It was a great movie, especially if you like Ray Charles's music. It was so good, it makes the audience forget that it's Jamie Foxx. Jamie Foxx pretty much becomes Ray Charles. Some parts were a little unsettling for me because I'm young enough to only have seen Ray Charles post-drug-abuse. Seeing him use drugs and having affairs goes against the image he showed in the 80's and after period that I was familiar with. You never know who will win an oscars, but I'd be surprised if he didn't get a nomination for best actor.

A side note about Ray: while there's sometimes talk about there not being strong female characters in movies. Well, Ray's mom is one of the strongest female movie characters I can remember seeing. She doesn't shoot anyone and she doesn't fight anyone, but the scene where she fights her motherly instincts to help Ray and instead makes him help himself to teach him to be self-sufficient showed real strength.

The third season of West Wing came out on DVD today and I have it added to my Netflix queue. It's weird that discs 1,2,4,5&7 are available now through Netflix but discs 3&6 are listed as "very long wait". Did a large number of people decide to skip the other discs and go directly to 3 and 6? It's not special features since the special features are all on disc 7. The only explanation I can come up with is that those discs have episodes that are either extremely popular for some reason (special guest or special theme or plotline) or they simply are episodes that have been skipped over in the repeated re-airings on Bravo.

I got a call from Hillary Rodham Clinton today. It's not as impressive as it sounds. First of all, it was a recording. Second of all, I'm not what you would call a fan of hers. In fact, her running this year would be one of the few scenarios where I would have voted for Bush again.

Anyway, I came home from work and there was a new message on my machine. This was unusual, especially considering there was one on my machine when I got home for lunch. Both were recording from the democratic party encouraging me to get out the vote. Interesting that both were democrats and I got none from republicans, especially since I haven't declared a party affiliation here yet. Of course, since NJ is consider a Kerry state, I guess the republicans have a better chance if more of the less-passionate voters don't come out to vote thinking that it's in the bag.

I also find it interesting that the messages were a automated recorded call talking to a answering machine. The less real-live humans involved in the election process, the better.

Anyway, the recording on the machine when I came home was of Hillary. I had already voted and if would not have influenced my vote. I kind of got a laugh out of it. Especially the fact that I could turn down the volume as it was playing and shut her up. If I had picked up the phone, I would have been annoyed, but it's not like I pick up my home phone anyway. I always screen my call on that phone because anyone I want to talk to calls me on my cell.

The most annoying campaign call I've ever gotten was a couple years ago during the Mascara/Murtha democratic primary. I was at the my parents. We were all sitting around the dinner table (strike one). I pick up and the guy immediately starts talking. To this day, I'm not sure if it was a recording or just a guy reading off a script. Either way, it was either a recording or a guy who didn't give me a chance to say a word (strike two). He started off "As a fellow arab-american..." Now, the term -American was never a term I particularly liked, because it tends to stress the anything and not the American part. Also, in my specific cased, it totally ignores half of my ancestors (strike three). Finally, chances are they went through their call list and seperated out different groups based on last name and considering he never let me talk, how did he know I wasn't a friend of the family or something who picked up the phone (strike four). Oh yeah, my company was actively campaigning for the guy's candidate's opponent. So he had no chance for my vote (strike five).

Oh well, Bush currently has 52% of the vote but is leading the electoral vote 193-112. I'm actually hoping for a tie. The way they explained it on tv, senate would vote, by state delegation, for president and the house for vice-president, so it's possible we could see Bush be President and Edwards be Vice-President. Of course, then the secret service would have their work cut out for them.

# posted by Tom : 11/02/2004 09:39:00 PM : (0) comments

In case you haven't noticed, election day is upon us. It's interesting here because I'm in the television market of a city in another state, a even greater percentage of annoying political television ads here are in races I don't care about than when I lived near Pittsburgh.
I am extremely, for a lack of a better term, cynical about the whole election process. Due to the late primary date in PA, I have yet to cast a meaningful vote in the primary. Also, in the two cases I've cast a vote for President, the guy I voted for won and, this year, for the second time the guy I voted for failed to get me to vote for him again. And I'm still pondering the question on whether voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil. That's why I intentionally didn't mark a vote for either candidate in '96. After that, I started looking into third party candidates. Right now, I'm at the conclusion that voting third party is better than not casting a vote. Right now, I'm still undecided. Last week, a guy at work brought up that Kerry had said he would cut a military program that is a big project for our company. This caused me to consider Bush again. Then, someone on tv brought up something that I feel should have been brought up more during the campaign. During the '00 campaign or after he won, Bush talked about being a uniting president, or something to that extent. That's a tough job and I wouldn't blame someone for failing to do it, but he never really tried. If I recall right, he tried to get a democrat or two on his cabinet, but everything, with the exception of right after 9/11, seemed to be aiming at being more divisive. Both parties goes out of their way to keep themselves separated. After the after effects of 9/11 died down, and he was riding high, he didn't even try to unite the two sides. I can think of opportunities he missed to attempt to mend, but it's late and I don't feel like writing them in.
On one note, I had no problem with Bush using 9/11 in his campaign. It was a defining moment in his presidency. It could not have been ignored just like the war in Iraq could not have been ignored. On the other hand, the war in Viet Nam could have been ignored a little more. People change in thirty years. Tell me about them recently.
I'm still not sold on Kerry. I might vote Libertarian just to record my annoyance at both major parties. Hell, I might write in my name.
Honestly, I'm eligible to be President in 2012. If I can get these two guys to run my campaign, how can I lose? God help us all.
If you really want to understand how I feel about this election, watch the latest episode of South Park that deals with the election of a new school mascot. The choices are a douche and a turd sandwich. It's a definite must-watch.
One final note, I'm not proofreading this entry after writing this, so excuse any grammar or logic glitches even more so than normal.