Our plane left at 1 pm and with the time change to EST we landed at 7 pm. Got our bags (one brand new roller bag now with a broken wheel – thanks AA union thugs for the delicate treatment of our luggage!) and waited for Enterprise to “pick us up”.

We had to wait about 20 minutes, and with the humidity in San Juan it felt as if we waited for about 3 years (I started planning Noah’s 9^th and 10^th birthday parties during the interim). Enterprise finally showed up, got us to our car and then we pulled out Maggie to get us to the Caribe Hilton.

Maggie is the nickname we gave our GPS when we were in Italy last year. Of the many languages that Maggie could speak we just thought that she sounded better speaking British English (very Helen Mirren) rather than Midwestern American. After we returned from Italy I set it to the American accent but it never sounded as cool.  So Maggie has remained British ever since, and, as usual, she got us where we needed to get.

The Caribe Hilton was lovely and the staff was helpful, but by the time we arrived at the hotel it was pretty late and the kids were starving, so we left the Hilton and Maggie guided us to the place we always seem to end up when we go on a trip – McDonald’s.

A note on ordering at McDonald’s – we hadn’t realized how little English would be spoken in Puerto Rico. We had figured that since they are an American protectorate and our military has a presence there that English would be a little more prevalent than we found it. As we soon learned most people at restaurants or service industries didn’t speak English, but hotel people did. Great if you’re staying at a hotel your entire stay, not great if you want a Happy Meal.

So Kim worked her way through ordering at McDonald’s and the kids ate and everyone was happy and slept good that night. The next day was our scheduled day to leave San Juan and get to Vieques, but first we had to go through the town of Fajardo and get to the ferry boat and then take that to Vieques.

The hell that is the Fajardo ferry boat ride next time.

A Month in Puerto Rico – Part 2 – The First Day is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Vieques and Culebra are both known for their beaches, and since Kim has been pining for a beach-centric vacation for years these places were perfect. Plus the kids could play in the sand and swim in the relatively shallow bays that made up many of the beaches of both islands.

After planning, the vacation broke down, time-wise, like this -

Week 1 – rent house in Vieques
Week 2 – condo on the main island of Puerto Rico, specifically the Loiza area
Week 3 – rent house in Culebra

Upon being told about this trip our parents, remembering how much fun they had with us on our first Italian trip, immediately volunteered to go with us, for the first week of our trip.

I’ll get into that more later on.

We got our airline tickets and started looking for lodging while we were going to stay there. Hotels were pretty much out of the question, mainly because of the price point, but renting a house/condominium was much more attractive, and there were many to choose from. We settled on a nice house that would be able to sleep everyone the first week, a condo our second week and then a house for the four of us our last week. There are a couple of options for travelling to Vieques and Culebra from the main island, but we settled on the cheapest mode of transport – the ferry. $2 per adult and $1 per child for a 1½ hour trip one way. How couldn’t that be great, right?

We got everything packed into 2 duffel bags. All four of us had 5 changes of clothes, except Peyton, who’s been having a lot of peeing accidents lately. Everything else (scuba gear, books, Legos, etc.) plus the clothing stuffed the bags full, but we were under the 50 lb. limit for each.

Flying out was a breeze. Arriving on Vieques was the hard part. More on that next time.

A Month in Puerto Rico – Part 1 – Getting There is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

And skidooing is an important plot point to the show, because while on their skidoo adventures the characters have learn things and get to play and also may find a Blue’s Clue, whichis  great and all, but you wanna know who else could really use skidooing, especially in these trying economic times?

The military. Could totally help them out.

One top of all of the budget cutting that could be done, getting rid of transport planes/ships that are no longer required, there’s the instantaneous benefits of such a power. Does the president need to insert a highly skilled team of Navy SEALs into Tehran RIGHT NOW to take out Mahmoud Ahmadinejad before he does something else crazy? Done! Does South Korea want to finally finish the Korean War once and for all and skidoo into Pyongyang and take on the entire populace of North Korea before they can completely mobilize? It’s doable. Anything could be doable, as long as we have a picture of where we need to put our military and our boys could remember those easy to recite words — “Blue skidoo, we can to.” Maybe end it with a “Sir, yes sir,” too.

If Robert Oppenheimer had been working on a secret skidoo project instead of the Manhattan Project our boys could have ended WWII early and gotten to Berlin even before the Russian army was thinking about moving westward from Stalingrad and we never would have had to invade North Africa or Italy or obliterate the Atlantic Wall. And LBJ could have won the Vietnam War, probably, if we’d been able to skidoo into Hanoi and convince Ho Chi Minh that we really did want him to be in favor of democracy. He might even have decided to run for reelection and change the course of history.

The major drawback is that our people need a picture on the other end of the skidoo to return the same way. If they lose that picture…well, Mr. Secretary of Defense, order a new transport, since we got rid of them after the budget cuts allowed through skidooing. Enjoy hitchhiking home, soldiers!

But we could get rid of Air Force One, also, just keep that little blue dog with the President whenever he goes on the road.

I think Blue would have to remain non-partisan though. Can’t be favoring one political party over another. He’d also have to have a code name.

Anyway, just an idea. A completely cool idea, but just an idea.

The Blue’s Clues Ability to Skidoo Could Have Astounding Military Applications is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

I think Noah likes the show because it reminds him of himself. George is curious, fairly bright, and always getting into situations that he’d be better off not getting into. He’s smart and funny and cute, just like George, and he probably smells better than George, even though TMWTYH bathes George regularly.

But the show does one thing that, the first time I heard it, I knew immediately what it meant when I heard it.

In between the two CG segments of the show they will cut to kids taking some lesson that George learned and put it to practical real-world use. Kids will make telescopes out of paper towel tubes or trace their shadows and watch the sun move and stuff like that, but they always say the same thing after each cartoon segment: “George is a monkey, and he can do things that you can’t do.”

Really? It’s really come to that? Telling kids that a monkey might be able to climb up telephone poles and swing from power lines without being fried to a crisp? Or that he can knock down an entire dinosaur exhibit and put it back together before some scientists return? What is the meaning of this?

If you’re like me you already know what this is — the legal disclaimer. Yes, George is a monkey, and he can do things that you can’t do, like get kidnapped from his homeland in Africa and be brought to New York City (wait — some people a long time ago did do that), or go up in a rocket and repair a satellite (that’s been done too), or go skiing and rescue a pig (I’m sure someone has done those exact same things on a ski trip before).

Get real, PBS. Kids are just as smart and brave and crafty and mischievous as Curious George, and while the disclaimer could read “George is a monkey, and he can do things that you shouldn’t do without asking your parents first,” all of the things he does are in fact doable, but some little kid might get hurt or die doing what George does on your show.

When I was a kid there was a park near my house and it had great things to play with there. My favorite thing to do there was swing as high as I could on the swings and then jump off the swing at its highest point, flying probably ten feet or so from a height of about nine to ten feet in the air. It was pretty thrilling to do, and I never broke my arm or ankle, and I could have, but it was fun. And Curious George has fun too, but PBS, don’t tell kids they shouldn’t be adventurous. That sometimes takes all the fun out of being a kid, and if that’s the case you might as well just call him Dullard George.

“George is a Monkey, and He Can Do Things That You Can’t Do.” is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

No, it wasn’t awesome. It was kinda sucky.

But then I remembered that Dr. Sullivan has kind of a screwy grading scheme, 100 isn’t always the top score that you can get, so I asked someone, “What was the top score you could get on this paper?” And they replied, “Seventy-five.”

So I got an A+, a 100%, or as I said, “a perfect,” and it only took about two weeks and some furious editing.

And he said -

Excellent paper. I like the way you presented the three inventors in the context of a broader picture of invention — and its influence within the African-American experience.

And I feel good about the paper. Very good.

Elijah McCoy, Lewis Latimer and Granville Woods: African-American Inventors of the 19th Century — A Postscript is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Woods’ Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph brought efficiency and safety to rail travel at a time when train collisions could be common. With the invention of the telephone and further advancements in communications technology, the telegraph became an antiquated means of communication. Although obsolete on its own, his invention was one of a serious of steps into a wider world of communication that we use today.

Latimer’s invention set the standard in lighting for the 25 years that followed. In 1904 William D. Coolidge developed an incandescent light bulb using tungsten, which extended bulb life far beyond Latimer’s carbon-filament bulb.

As Henry E. Baker  said in The Colored American, “It is held to be of far greater importance to show that the Negro as a race has actually accomplished very much of value in the line of invention, and thus to show how much in error are those who constantly assert that the Negro has made no lasting contribution to the civilization of the age. These facts ought clearly to show that under favorable environment the Negro is capable of performing his whole duty in the work of mankind, whether it be tilling the earth with his hoe or advancing the world by his thought.”¹⁸

Summary

McCoy, Woods and Latimer all came from modest beginnings. They didn’t have privilege but they worked hard and found recognition, and some a measure of fame, from what they were able to do with ideas, sweat and ingenuity. Their ability to rise up paved the way for modern African-American inventors like Dr. Mark Dean, who was instrumental in the creation of the personal computer for IBM; George Alcorn, the developer of the imaging x-ray spectrometer; and theoretical physicist Dr. Shirley Jackson, who helped create the portable fax, the touch tone telephone and the fiber optic cables used to provide clear overseas telephone calls.¹⁹ As pioneers in their scientific fields, these men broke past the barriers of their time to open up new avenues for others that would follow.

Next time, what happened after I got the paper back.

Elijah McCoy, Lewis Latimer and Granville Woods: African-American Inventors of the 19th Century — Part 6 — How They Made a Difference and Conclusion is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Woods remained an independent inventor his entire life, always remaining outside of the technological mainstream of Bell and Edison. The never ending scourge of his life became having to constantly defend his patents in court. As people of the time were always inventing it was natural that several people could come up with the same idea at roughly the same time. Because of this, the majority of Woods’ money went to fighting legal disputes. After years of being destitute and penniless he suffered a stroke on January 30, 1910 at Harlem Hospital in New York City – killing him at the young age of 53. Despite his great success as an inventor and amassing over 60 patents in total, he had little to show for it. His simple ground-level headstone in East Elmhurst, New York reads “Granville T. Woods, Esq, 1856–1910, Electrician — Inventor.”¹⁶

Latimer understood incandescent light in ways that few other men did, enough so that Thomas Edison himself asked him to work for him and help defend Edison’s patents against competitors. Later in life Latimer worked as a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigation on electric lights. He married Mary Wilson on December 10, 1873. They had two daughters, Emma and Louise. In 1918 Latimer was asked to join the Edison Pioneers, a group of distinguished men who had participated in the early years of the electric light industry. Membership in this group represented the highest honor to individuals in the electrical field, and he was one of the original 28 charter members, all of whom had worked with Edison prior to 1885. In addition to this he volunteered his time to help the community as well as an accomplished poet, author, musician and artist. He died at the age of 80.¹⁷

Next time, How They Made a Difference and Conclusion

Elijah McCoy, Lewis Latimer and Granville Woods: African-American Inventors of the 19th Century — Part 5 — The Fruit of Their Labor is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Granville Woods was Australian by birth and moved  and emigrated to Missouri with his family in 1872 when he was 16. His schooling was overseas was meager and upon emigrating he began working as a fireman – a job whose sole purpose was to fuel the firebox of the engine to keep the steam levels high – with the Iron Mountain Railroad. While the self-taught Woods continued to teach himself about electricity, he worked a variety of transportation and industrial jobs. He did strive for more education and occasionally managed to get private tutoring or take night courses in engineering, but he never earned a degree.¹³

Lewis Howard Latimer was the son of runaway slaves. Born in Chelsea, Massachusetts on September 4, 1848 to George and Rebecca Latimer who had fled his master in Virginia for the safety of Trenton, New Jersey six years prior. When George’s master, James B. Gray arrived where the Latimers had settled in Boston to take them back to Virginia, famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison took up the cause. Eventually funds were raised to pay Gray $400 for George’s freedom.

From those beginnings, Lewis had a minimal school-based education. Most of what he knew came from on-the-job training and what he could pick up here and there. He eventually joined the Navy during the Civil War and afterward he began work at Crosby Halstead and Gould where he learned most of the skills that he would later employ in his work: sketching patent drawings.¹⁴

Next time, The Fruit of Their Labor

Elijah McCoy, Lewis Latimer and Granville Woods: African-American Inventors of the 19th Century — Part 4 — Education as the Foundation of Invention is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Educational reform in the United States was just gaining momentum in the late 19^th century. Before that time educating enslaved African-Americans in the South was forbidden by law in many states, but in the North, where schools for African Americans did exist, they were generally housed in crowded buildings staffed by teachers of low q

ualifications and restricted to the knowledge of the teacher. African-American parents also grouped together to make private arrangements for schooling and often times hired their own teachers. Public schools did outnumber private ones, but the quality of educational services varied from school to school, with the quality of teaching depending on how much the parents were willing to spend to pay teachers.

In fact, many of the schools formed would hardly be recognized as such by modern standards. Elementary education was available to African-Americans, but higher, more specialized, educational services that would produce more respect among the already somewhat-doubting white class was harder to attain.

Due in part to this, illiteracy rates among African-Americans were tracked at a staggering 79.9% in 1870, the first year that such statistics were collected. With improvements in education this figure dropped by roughly 10% in each decade that followed underscoring the need for African-American education.¹¹

It’s surprising then that education seemed to be of little factor in the success of any of the black inventors mentioned. Of the three, only one was able to attain a college degree – McCoy. While, conversely the most successful of the bunch – Woods who was also known as the “Black Edison” – had only a meager elementary school education. They proved that the sky was the limit for what could be achieved with creativity and knowledge of your subject against the traditional thinking that formal education alone stood as the foundation for invention of thought.

Next time, Education as the Foundation of Invention

Elijah McCoy, Lewis Latimer and Granville Woods: African-American Inventors of the 19th Century — Part 3 — The Educational System in 19th Century America is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

In discussing the improvements, Latimer stated in his patent application for the process –

“My invention relates more particularly to carbonizing the conductors for incandescent lamps, though it is equally applicable to the manufacture of delicate sheets or strips of dense and tough carbon designed for any purpose whatsoever….

“When heated the confining-plates expanded, while the blanks between them contract very considerably under the intense heat of the furnace, so that many of them are broken and distorted in consequence of their extremely-delicate structure and their tendency to shift their position between the plates. This I avoided by the method I propose…”

His method was to coat the carbon in graphite (to keep it from sticking) and then place it inside of a cardboard sleeve which would prevent the super-heated carbon from breaking during the carbonizing process. His method reduced the amount of broken carbons to almost zero, allowing for more useable carbons instead of the few that were being produced per batch at the time. His mass production process could be applied to many different uses, and because of this the Latimer carbons had a much longer life and made them less expensive.¹⁰

Next time, The Educational System in 19th Century America

Elijah McCoy, Lewis Latimer and Granville Woods: African-American Inventors of the 19th Century — Part 2 — The Inventions — Lewis Latimer is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

After working in the railroad industry for several years Woods moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and set up a firm for production of telephones and other electrical equipment. While there, at the age of 31, he patented a means of telegraphy for trains to communicate with station houses using wires on the roofs of the train cars. He based his idea on trolley car wires, attaching to another wire suspended above the train track. The Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph was a major breakthrough in telegraphy which, because it allowed communications between individual trains and stations, greatly reduced railway accidents by allowing dispatchers to communicate the locations of trains to other trains. As Woods put it in his patent application:

“My invention relates to induction-telegraphy, having reference to its use between moving vehicles, particularly on railways; and its object is to obtain increased effects from a given dynamic force with a single permanent conductor, thereby economizing in respect to the plant employed.”⁸

This was the first time train operators had been able to give and receive information about their location that could be immediately passed on to other moving trains. The Washington Bee lauded him for his discoveries:

“Granville T Woods is the smartest colored man in Ohio. He is an inventor who will someday make Edison look to his laurels. Never a day passes but that he invents something new, and his only pleasure is to experiment in electricity and applied mechanics.

“…the most notable of Mr. Woods’ inventions is a plan for telegraphing from one moving train to another. When a railroad engineer he thought out this device. Afterwards the same thing was discovered by Riley Smith and Edison perfected it, but Woods was the first in the field and he has successfully established his claim in the courts.”⁹

Woods was fascinated by what electricity could do when harnessed properly, and his advances in in-motion telegraphy saved countless lives. During the rest of his career as an inventor, applied for more than 60 patents, among them a steam boiler furnace, an automatic air brake, a tunnel construction for electric railway and an electromechanical brake.

Elijah McCoy, Lewis Latimer and Granville Woods: African-American Inventors of the 19th Century — Part 2 — The Inventions — Granville T. Woods is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Elijah McCoy

Elijah McCoy’s great invention, the one that would secure his name in the American lexicon, was something that solved a common problem among all crews of trains – lubricating engine parts. In 1870 McCoy took a job with the Michigan Central Railroad as a fireman – part of his duties included oiling the engine. Crews would often have to stop their locomotives, sometime for hours on end, and oil the engine to prevent overheating. This caused passenger and mail delays and stretched long locomotive travel times even longer. ³

McCoy thought of a way to eradicate this problem. As he said in his patent application, in flowery language, “To all whom it may concern: Be it known that I, ELIJAH MCCOY, of the city of Ypsilanti, in the county of Washtenaw and the state of Michigan, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Lubricators; and I do hereby declare that the following is a full, clear, and exact description thereof, reference being had to the accompanying drawing and to the letters of reference marked thereon, which form a part of this specification.

“The nature of my invention consists in the construction and arrangement of a lubricator for steam-cylinders, as will be hereinafter more fully set forth.”

McCoy then set about explaining his incredibly simple but revolutionary device: A covered cup, containing lubricating oil, with a hollow stem at the bottom that had a valve that would be forced upward as steam pressure exerted force on the valve. When the steam opened the valve lubricating oil would drip out of the cup, dispensing oil to the engine parts requiring the oil.⁴

McCoy took a problem that had plagued engineers for decades and solved it with a device so simple yet so invaluable that competitors began to copy his invention, leading discerning people with a want for the true article to ask for “the Real McCoy”.⁵

As a 1903 The Colored American put it in an article about African-American inventors –

“At the head of the list stands the name of Elijah McCoy, of Detroit. He has succeeded in placing his lubricators on many of the steam-car and steamboat engines in the Northwest, and also on some of the Trans-Atlantic steamers. And these are said to net him a handsome royalty.”⁶

Elijah McCoy, Lewis Latimer and Granville Woods: African-American Inventors of the 19th Century — Part 2 — The Inventions — Elijah McCoy is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

You’ll notice superscripts throughout the posts. Those are for the endnotes that were part of the hard copy. I will not be including that in this; no point in doing that.

Also, if you find this paper and copy it, believe me, there are ways to find you. The Internet is a glorious and wonderful place, and I’m posting my paper because I’m proud of it, but that works two ways — me being nice, and you, the reader, playing nice too.

And so without further ado.…

Elijah McCoy, Lewis Latimer and Granville Woods: African-American Inventors of the 19th Century

African-Americans down through the centuries, whether slave or free, improvised and created tools and machines that helped them either in the fields or in the cities of the United States during the Nineteenth Century. As The Colored American put it November 14, 1903 –

“It should be borne in mind that the great industrial burden in the South fell almost wholly upon the Negro slaves, not only in agriculture and domestic labor, but in mechanical pursuits as well: so that through his experiences in field and workshop the Negro laborer was enabled – indeed forced – to devise many an new practical contrivance for minimizing the exactness of manual labor.“¹

On the plantations of the South, where African-Americans of many skills and strengths were often grouped together, new tools and machines were created that helped ease the back-breaking day to day labor. In the cities, mind-numbingly tedious labor, such as the construction of shoes, was made simple and quick by inventors such as Jan Ernst Matzeliger, who’s shoe lasting machine revolutionized the shoe industry, drastically cutting production time and man hours.

As early as the late 19^th century African-American inventors were beginning to be recognized for their accomplishments. “The oft-repeated accusation against the Negro that he is an imitator and not an inventor does not stand the test when brought under the limelight of investigation,” claimed a reporter in 1908 in the Seattle Republican. Which was true. According to the Governmental Patent Office at that time, it was estimated that of the 900,000 total patent rights that had been granted in the history of the office about 1,000 of those came from African-American inventors. Henry E. Baker, one of the first Black Patent Examiners in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said, “…the records of this office do not distinguish between inventors as to race but only to nationality (but black inventors)…not only served to raise the standard of the inventors materially and socially but (have) greatly aided in increasing the facilities of civilization.“²

African-Americans, often without the benefits of higher education, were starting to make noted, valuable contributions to the American landscape, even if they as a people were still not fully accepted as social or intellectual equals in white America. This paper will focus on the backgrounds, work and inventions of three influential African-American Inventors of the 19^th Century inventors: Lewis Latimer, Elijah McCoy and Granville Woods. It will address their inventions, the social and racial climate at the time and how their race impacted their opportunities and educations.

Next time, their inventions.

Elijah McCoy, Lewis Latimer and Granville Woods: African-American Inventors of the 19th Century — Part 1 — Introduction is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

What will it answer and how will it answer it is the big question though. Will we ever be told why no children could be born on the island? Will we ever know who built the statue that Jacob lived inside of? Will we be told who eventually finished the donkey wheel project started so long ago by Jacob’s brother, the Man in Black? Will it be explained what was wrong with Sayid before he committed hari kari with the bomb in the submarine? And where is Daniel Faraday? I want him back one more time.

There’s a lot to answer, and judging from last week’s episode focusing on the relationship of Jacob and his brother, the showrunners are in no hurry to get to the finish line that they set out for themselves two seasons ago. Yeah, we got the answer from season two on who the bodies were in the cave, but that deserved a whole hour dedicated to one simple question?

I don’t think that the people who make the show are going to end it as some hallucination in Hurley’s crazy head or a dream that Aaron started having before he was born or fast forwarding five to 10, or more, years into the future and seeing whomever took over for Jacob downing another airliner or crashing a cruise ship or something. I just want a satisfying ending, not everything has to be explained and I know that everything won’t be explained (like how that plane was able to drop a food shipment on the island if normal people aren’t really able to travel to the island) but I want certain people to live (mainly Hurley) and for their stories to end with satisfying endings. Not much to ask.

Also, I’m going to see the Times Talks Live:Lost on May 20 where New York Times entertainment editor Lorne Manly is going to be talking live with producers Carlton Cuse and Lindelof. I’m sure they won’t give anything away (the finale is only 3 days later) but I bet they’ll hint at something. Maybe I’ll tweet it — that would be fun.

And what show will I watch after this is all over with? Maybe The Walking Dead.

Getting Nervous About “Lost”, Too, But Not Too Nervous is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

And I really love that movie. I truly do.

And now Iron Man 2 is coming up this Friday. And I couldn’t be more nervous about it.

I’m worried it’s just gonna be terrible. I think my reasoning is that the first time around there wasn’t so much focus on who the bad guys are, and I think that the people playing the bad guys are bad choices. The Batman franchise started to die when the films focused more on the bad guys than on Batman. Mickey Rourke? Really? He looks terrible. And silly. And Scarlett Johansson? Man, she’s so one-note actress (like Natalie Portman) it’s not even funny.

Maybe it’s the product tie-ins (I’ve seen about 25 in the past couple of days) or the bad guys in the movie. I don’t know. Just have a strange feeling about this one. Maybe it’ll be different once I see it, and I’ll see it, but we’ll see.

UPDATE - The reviews are in and they aren’t that great. Compared to the 92% that the first Iron Man film got among the top critics on RT, IM2 has gotten a rousing 66%. One of my favorite authors, Cory Doctorow tweeted “Iron Man 2: the stupid, it burns. Wait for DVD, watch in Italian, pretend it’s opera.” I kinda feel bad for John Favreau, who’s a great director, but I’m sure he’s laughing all the way to the bank since IM2 brought in, in the opening weekend, $128,122,480. Typical Hollywood. We’ll see, after word of mouth, what the dropoff will be.

Getting a Little Nervous About Iron Man 2.… is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

And everyone said that Avatar would be a game changer, the meme was coming down the pipe even before the movie was released and the whole understanding of why it would be the game-changer-to-be was because of the photorealistic characters. But for some reason that whole angle of the film has been lost in the cloud that it was in 3-D.

Glorious 3-D! Plants and animals and those Huey helicopter looking VTOLs and floating mountains and all. All of it in 3-D. And like I said earlier, the film looks great.

So now other studios have latched onto that breaking new technology from the 1950’s also and films all over the place are about to be released in 3-D, whether you want them to be or not. Clash of the Titans was filmed in standard 2-D, but after Avatar splashed big Warner Bros. went back and made Titans into 3-D to satisfy this unquenchable desire for Perseus and the Kraken and Medusa’s head to be in 3-D. The remake of Piranha is going to be in 3-D and even more films are coming out in that cutting edge 20th Century technology.

But butts in the seats in theaters have been declining for the past several years since HD has been introduced into the home theater market. The big studios have been asking themselves what could bring people back to the theater and they think they’ve found it, for now.

Going back to the game changer — I don’t see why the studios haven’t figured out yet why Avatar is really such a big deal, because it’s fairly obvious. Maybe it’s because of legal issues that would be involved in the making of film, but the logical end to what Avatar has brought us is filmmakers being able to have any actor or actress, living or dead, in their film. George C. Scott as Robert E. Lee in a Ridley Scott picture? Done. Jimmy Stewart and Jim Carrey finally together in a comedy after all this time? Doable. Grace Kelly back to play Julia Roberts’ mother? Not impossible. All it takes is a bunch of LEDs on a stand-in actor’s head and we can paint Charlie Chaplin in a new comedy from the Farrelly brothers. He could eat poop or something and then do a funny dance.

Voice talent could be big then and actors that never got work before could (secretly) put blockbusters on their resumes. Like I said, legal issues abound, since the families of these people might disagree with allowing their loved ones to return from the grave to be resurrected again on the big screen, but everyone in Hollywood has a price, right?

So 3-D? It’s a fad again. Hollywood should look to the real future — harvesting dead actors for profit.

Why Avatar Was Revolutionary and the Studios Just Don’t Understand Why is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Elijah McCoy, Lewis Latimer and Granville Woods: An Exercise in Frustration is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

The end of the 19th Century was a turbulent time for African-Americans. The Civil War, having just recently concluded, was still an open wound in parts of the United States, and the lingering feelings and racism bled into the Reconstruction period and beyond. During this time, a handful of men rose above the difficulties to create life-changing inventions that would modify the future of entire industries. This paper will focus on the backgrounds, work and inventions of three influential inventors: Lewis Latimer, Elijah McCoy and Granville Woods.

Woods’ work in telephony and telegraphy, McCoy’s work in engine lubrication and Latimer’s work in the manufacturing of carbon filaments for Edison’s light bulbs made them forerunners in their fields for which they received praise and recognition in a time when such adulation for African-Americans was rare. McCoy’s invention lead users to coin the phrase “the real McCoy”. Latimer’s work was so important to the field of electric light technology that he was given one (out of twenty-eight) of the coveted spots in the Edison Pioneers, a group that represented the highest honor in the electrical field. Woods, known in some circles at the time as the “Black Edison”, pioneered different uses of telegraphy, allowing communication between station houses and moving trains.

This paper will cover what these inventors were famous (and not so famous) for, how their backgrounds as the children of former slaves impacted their opportunities and educations, and how their race played a part in their notoriety as well as how their inventions changed our lives.

Elijah McCoy, Lewis Latimer and Granville Woods: African-American Inventors of the 19th Century is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

And the people of the area were very nice and we always had a great time there. It was fun.

So fast-forward many years later. To a month or so ago.

I had seen the preview for Amores Perros at the Inwood Theater many years ago and remembered at the time that it had been said that it was a sort-of Mexican Pulp Fiction, so when I saw it was going to be on IFC a couple of weeks ago I set up the Tivo to tape it. It sat there for awhile, waiting for us, and we finally watched it.

Oh boy.

If you don’t know about the movie, Amores Perros follows several groups of people in Mexico City in a non-linear story. There is Octavio, who is in love with his brother’s wife and wants to help her leave him, so he starts putting his pet Rottweiler into dog fights. There’s also a guy who is cheating on his wife with a soap opera star and her dog falls down in this hole in the floor and then she falls into the hole and requires some sort of surgery and she can’t walk anymore. And there’s a homeless guy who’s a gun for hire, killing people for money, but all he really wants is to see his daughter again and tell her that he loves her, so he double-crosses two business partners and steals their money and then.…

But that would give away the ending, which, like mostly everything in Amores Perros, is heart-wrenching and sad.

And what you see of Mexico City is horrifying. It’s actually worse than Man on Fire, which was also a film about a guy who’s seeking revenge for a kidnapped little girl in Mexico City. The only thing that Man on Fire has that Amores Perros doesn’t have is a guy gets his fingers chopped off. Or Denzel Washington. He’s in Man on Fire, which makes the cool quotient of Man on Fire rise dramatically.

But still, Amores Perros is terrifying. And I’m also glad I never paid to see it, unlike Trainspotting. I will never go to Mexico City after seeing this film. Do I want to fear for my life, or that I might be kidnapped, or a family member might be kidnapped and then held for ransom? What if I paid and that family member was killed by the kidnappers? Or caught in a car chase where someone is racing an injured dog to the hospital? Then again, the dog is a Rottweiler, so I wouldn’t feel too bad about it dying, but still, what if I was hit by those guys while driving? And then a crazy homeless hitman stole my wallet while he was pretending to help me? And what if a crazy homeless hitman killed me while I was there? How much would someone in Mexico City pay to have me killed if the Peso is so low to the dollar?

It boggles the mind. Give me a fake dreamy Mexico where the people are friendly and wonderful and no one will kill me if I decided to travel there. I’ll take Mexico in the late 1970’s for $1000, Alex.

What were some of Glenn Vance’s happiest memories of traveling as a child?

You know the answer.

After Seeing Amores Perros, I Only Want to Go to the “Fake” Mexico is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

“We wish you a Merry Christmas;
We wish you a Merry Christmas;
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!”

“Wow, thanks guys. Merry Christmas to you too.”

“Now bring us some figgy pudding.”

“Okay, have a good night. Stay warm!”

“No, bring us some figgy pudding.”

“Figgy pudding?”

“Yes. Figgy pudding. Now. We won’t go until we get some.”

“Stop it. Leave.”

“No.”

“I don’t have any figgy pudding. What is figgy pudding?”

“We won’t go until we get some.”

“Why?”

“Because. We love figgy pudding.”

“I DON’T HAVE ANY FIGGY PUDDING.”

“What the — dude? We caroled for you. Now bring us some figgy pudding. Bring some right here.”

“Get it yourself. I don’t have any figgy pudding.”

“We won’t go until we get some.”

“People, leave! Now! No figgy pudding here! Not going to be any either!”

“We’re not leaving.”

“Get out of here! I don’t have any figgy pudding.”

“Ok, bring us a figgy pudding and a cup of good cheer then.”

“Dude, I’m going to show you some good cheer in a few minutes. Let me get my .12 gauge of good cheer for you.”

When Christmas Carols Go Wrong is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Databank Keeper — “Okay, so what have we got so far?“
George Lucas — “Nothing. We have nothing.“
DK — “Alright…what is it? Human, creature of some sort.…something…“
GL — “Not human. We have enough humans. Make it a creature.“
DK — “Sentient or not?“
GL — “Definitely sentient.“
DK — “Wise or not?“
GL — “Wise? Like Yoda?“
DK — “Yeah.“
GL -  “Hmm…not so wise. Just normal.“
DK — “Okay, a normal creature. What does it look like?“
GL — “Furry. Tall and furry.“
DK — “Like a Wookiee?“
GL — “Okay…no, make it short.“
DK — “Like an Ewok?“
GL — *Sigh* “Scratch furry. Make it scaly. And green.“
DK — “Like Greedo?“
GL — “…Okay. Scaly, green, big beaver teeth.“
DK — “Like Walrus Man?“
GL — “Why is this so hard?“
DK — “I don’t know. You thought this stuff up.“
GL — “Short. Pigish…creature.“
DK — “Like an Ugnaught?“
*George hits his fist on the desk — repeatedly*
GL — “Okay, not scaly and green. Scaly and…orange.“
DK — “…Orange is good.“
GL — “Yes, orange is good. Don’t have many orange creatures.“
DK — “What do we call the orange creature’s species?“
GL — “How about a…Rith.“
DK — “No can do. Too close to ‘Bith’. And ‘Sith’.“
GL — “Toynarian! Vimbanite! Morax! Anything!“
DK — “Toydarian, Mimbanite, Gorax. Already done.“
GL — “Okay…Flangian.“
DK — “Flangian?“
GL — “Yes. A Flangian. He will be a Flangian.“
DK — “Where did you come up with that?“
GL — “I just…created…it.“
DK — “Fine. What’s the Flangian’s backstory?“
*Silence for 5 minutes*
GL — “The Flangian was recruited by criminal elements on his home world, Flangia, and eventually grew up on a crime boss’ ship, the Bardo’s Luck. He eventually bought his freedom from the crime boss and joined went to the Imperial Academy. He was a good pilot but he got kicked out for…some reason…so he got back into crime and smuggled…things…around the galaxy. And then for…some reason…he got caught up in the Rebellion.“
DK — “…That’s Han Solo.“
GL — “YYYYYYYAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!“
He breaks a technical Oscar against the wall.
DK — “You know this isn’t easy, George! Remember how long it took you to come up with Yoda?“
GL — “Jar Jar was so much simpler.“
DK — “Yeah, but the whole ‘race’ thing with him…“
GL — “Yeah, that sucked.“
DK — “Yeah.“
GL — “Okay…he grew up privledged, but then was sent to a farm when his parents died. He moved to a swamp planet and then after being hunted down by Dark Jedi he fled there to go live with…Ewoks or something. And his best friend, he’s a Jedi too, and so his friend and he love the same girl but finally have a duel on a space platform -“
DK — “…You’re kidding…right?“
GL — “…What?“
DK — “That’s like everybody you’ve ever created in the whole saga, main-character-wise.“
GL — “Hey, who came up with this? Me? Yes, me! I’m detecting a more critical tone than usual, so don’t screw with me! Making this stuff up is hard!“
DK — “Well exsqueeze me.“
GL — “Shut up, Jar Jar.“
DK — “Okay, easy one. What’s his name?“
GL — “How about…Fluke Bolo?“
DK — “Or Gorge Mucus? Come on, man! Are you kidding? Are you really out of ideas? Come on, man!“
*George hangs his head*
DK — “What should we call our scaly orange Flangian? I don’t know. Just say whatever pops into your head. That’ll be his name.“
GL — “Bill.“
DK — “Bill?“
GL — “That’s the first thing that popped into my head.“
*George twiddles his thumbs*
GL — “Okay, we can work with…Bill.”

The Creative Mind of George Lucas Divines a New Star Wars Character is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

In the town of Loro Ciufenna that we were staying there was a newsstand that sold, on each Sunday, one copy of the International Herald Tribune. The IHT is the European version of the New York Times, but from a decidedly Euro-centric viewpoint, but you still have to put up with Paul Krugman and Roger Cohen. So the first time we bought the IHT (for  2 Euro) and splashed across the front page was a story about Michael Jackson, sort of a career retrospective and how it mentioned that he had planned to tour in the fall. Only after 10 or so paragraphs did it mention that he was dead.

Wow. Michael Jackson was dead? I called my mother and asked her when it had happened and was told that it was a few days after we had left the States, which made me happy to be in Italy, because it meant that I didn’t have to live through all of the crap that was going on in the States about how, oh my God, he’s dead! What happened? What will we do without this lovable eccentric genius who died before his time? Let’s all run out right this freaking second and buy everything that we can that has Michael Jackson’s voice or picture or essence on it!

Supposedly Michael Jackson’s estate has earned over $100 million since his death. And yes, I feel for his children, whom I’m sure loved their father, even though he nicknamed one of them Blanket. And I’m sure that his family was sad when he died, but I hope there is some remorse they feel cashing checks for everything from their shares of his estate to the new reality series that is going to be broadcast with most of the Jacksons in it. I’m probably being pessimistic, given what human nature is really like, of course.

I think that the thing that gets me the most about this Michael love is that everyone seems to have forgotten how completely freaky this person they are worshiping was. All of these “Thriller” dance things and “Thriller” on Party City television ads and Neverland Ranch and the child-sex thing — what the — ? This person, only a few years ago, was considered a freak of nature, a possible child rapist and understandably distrusted by many people. Is the new love the product of a remarkable PR campaign? It’s definitely possible. Who knows.

And why do I care? Part of the “Thriller” thing is, I’m sure, a long-lost love of an ephemeral, imagined 1980’s and a simpler time. Do people feel lonely for this? Should I care at all?

Give it a little while. It will go away.

I hope.

Michael Jackson is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

After that Kat and I left. Like I said, I didn’t like Drivin’ n’ Cryin’, so I didn’t stay, but I followed the band I went to see for the next several years. I didn’t see them live anymore, but I got all of their albums and watched their progression from country-rock (starting with “No Depression”) to a mixture of bluegrass and country-folk (“Anodyne”). I didn’t know about all of the internal turmoil that was going on within the band at the time, I just thought they were great. And it hit me hard when I heard that they’d broken up. Great bands break up every other day, but this one hit me rather hard. I really liked them and now I had to stop being lazy and find something new to listen to.

Of course, I didn’t have to wait long. Farrar went out and formed Son Volt and Tweedy formed Wilco.

And if I’d been looking for a band to like after the breakup of Uncle Tupelo, Wilco was real love.

Their first album “A.M.” is fantastic. It continued an already established sound that Tweedy and begun with Uncle Tupelo and carried it a step further, in more of a Rolling Stones direction. If CDs could wear out I would have worn out “A.M.” by now. It is still one of my favorite comfort albums to listen to.

Their second album is less than perfect though. “Being There” has great moments, but interspersed through it are tracks that I could have done without (‘Outta Mind, Outta Sight’, ‘Kingpin’, ‘Hotel Arizona’) and that made me not love it as much as I wanted to. Not saying it isn’t good, it is, but I didn’t have that total unconditional love that I’d felt with “A.M.”.

After that a year or so went by and they came out with “Summerteeth”. And I thought, “Hmm…that’s a stupid album title.”

And my love for them stopped there. It was like people who like kids from TV shows in the 70’s. Peter Billingsley never aged beyond A Christmas Story. Mark Hamill never aged past Star Wars. Cryogenically frozen, my love for Wilco stayed. And that was 1999.

Fast forward to a week and a half ago.

My friend Jimi has an extra ticket to their show at the Palladium, his wife doesn’t like the experimental guitar work of current Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, and they can’t get a babysitter, so a free ticket is mine for the taking if I want it. And I do. So we go.

And the show was great. They played for about 2 hours plus and, strangely, didn’t play much off of the 2 albums that I love so much. Mostly from “Summerteeth”, “A Ghost is Born” and “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”. So now I’m catching up on my education by listening to their other albums.

And I have one thing for Mr. Tweedy. Please, Jeff, no more goofy album titles. I’d rather we didn’t break up again for such a long period of time. Thank you.

Wilco at the Palladium and the Perils of a Band Giving Their Third Album a Goofy Name is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

My son has very cool tastes in music. He’s five years old and he likes Johnny Cash, Weezer, The Avett Brothers, The Pixies and other hardly-ever-on-the-charts bands. He doesn’t like girl singers, just boy singers, but the boy singers he likes by and large are pretty awesome and I’m proud to say that, yes, my son knows the words to Cash’s “Sea of Heartbreak” and The Avett Brothers “Die Die Die”.

My wife on the other hand does not always listen to cool music. She gravitates towards the ‘mix’ stations, and that’s where our trouble starts.

If you ever listen to any of these ‘mix’ stations you’ll realize that they are pretty much easy listening for 30 year olds. Songs you used to shake your fist in the air to, like Bon Jovi, or piano ballads from Elton John, or the official band of the ‘mix’ station, The Fray. These songs were once cool, long ago, and now are not, but these ‘mix’ stations continue to pump out these songs every hour so people listening in office buildings can hum along to something and hopefully, god willing, get them through the day.

Several months ago one of the big songs on these ‘mix’ stations was “Hey There Delilah”, a sappy syrupy love song written, I guess, to the singer’s girlfriend. The song is pretty lame, but for some reason my son, who has very cool tastes in music, loves it.

Plain White T’s! Grumble grumble grumble.

Where did you emo wannabe’s come from? Will you ever leave us? Probably not, now that you have some other crummy song called “1, 2, 3, 4″ on the radio, on that ‘mix’ station that my wife listens to and my son hears as my wife drives him around Dallas. Why can’t my wife listen to something awesome like Hüsker Dü or Wilco or Grandaddy or something like that? Isn’t there a law against music like this? Aren’t we closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay because of people like The Plain White T’s?

Maybe we should waterboard The Plain White T’s. That would be satisfying.

Things We Can All Do Without, Part 2: The Plain White T’s is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

And now that show is over. Completely over. And I can’t stop saying “frak”.

I’ll say it in the car when the kids are around. And she rolls her eyes everytime and then chastises me.] my parents, people I don’t even know, and I can’t stop saying it. I am a junkie for “frak”.

Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer, and, for frak’s sake, help me stop saying “frak”. Pretty please?

I’m Having a Hard Time Not Saying “Frak” Anymore is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Why are you a fashion trend? Who thought that taking a pair of $2 rubber rain boots and adding colorful paint was a good idea? Whoever it was has made a lot of money off of all of the moms at my oldest’s school. Doing the minimal amount of research for this post, I saw that Neiman Marcus sells a pair of rain boots for $225.00. They’re the Burberry Check Rain Boot, and I’m sure that Mr. Burberry will be laughing the whole way to the bank as some silly woman drops down her AmEx Titanium card for a pair of them.

I once bought a pair of utilitarian, black rubber ones for walking around the muddy lot that my house was being built on after destroying a pair of tennis shoes. I got them from Wal-Mart and they were worth every penny of the $8 that I spent on them 3 years ago. I still have them. Maybe I’ll wear them to school sometime to try to fit in with the trendy ladies. Then again, I’m not a lady, so they might take it as a slight or an insult that I’m wearing rain boots minus colorful painting emblazened on them.

Do we really need things like these? And why do people feel that they have to spend tons of money on something like this? It’s a free country, I know, but come on, people.

Things We Can All Do Without, Part 1 : Cute Colorful Expensive Rain Boots is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

But I’ve noticed that ‘Lost’, which is probably one of the best shows currently on television, keeps doing this stupid stupid dialogue convention over and over and over until you could make a drinking game out of it. Maybe you haven’t noticed it, but that’s my job, to notice the mundane and pointless.

It goes like this — two people are going somewhere on the island, doesn’t matter where, but they are alone, walking, or eating something, or listening to a record, and one of them will suddenly say a seeming non sequitor, the other will be confused, reply, “What?” or something like that, and the other person will explain. In an episode a couple of weeks ago they did it not once but three times in one episode. Like I said, you could have a drinking game.

So this is the way I would write it if I were writing the show -

Locke and Sawyer are trudging through the jungle, not a care in the world about Others or Smokey or Christian popping out or anything, just trudging through the jungle. They haven’t spoken in some time.

LOCKE — “Five.“
SAWYER — Looks around confused, focusing on LOCKE. “What’d you say?“
LOCKE — “Five. I said five, James.“
SAWYER — Still confused. “…Five what?“
LOCKE — Now confused too. “…Uh…you know, about what you said earlier. There are five. Five.“
SAWYER — Now looking peeved. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.“
LOCKE — Spreading his hands, ever the teacher. “About…2 hours ago we were talking about…you know, that thing we were talking…about.“
SAWYER — “John, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know what “five” means.“
LOCKE — Now very confused. “You don’t?“
SAWYER — “…No.“
There is a long silence as Locke looks at Sawyer. He is very confused now, to say the least, and trying to figure out what “five” refers to.
LOCKE — “Hmm…I don’t know what “five” means either.“
Sawyer smirks. “Nice one.” He begins trudging again.
Locke stands in the jungle, then follows Sawyer. “I’ll think of what it means in a minute!“
SAWYER — “Sure you will, Sherlock.”

He heads off into the jungle. Locke quizzically follows.

It would be funny. And then maybe the ‘Lost’ writers wouldn’t do it anymore.

A Post About How ‘Lost’ Does This Stupid Repetitive Dialogue Cliche is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

I have a strange history with members of the WFAA news team. Way back, when I was about 17 or so there was a guy on WFAA that did the news named Quin Mathews. One day I saw him at a CD shop, so, being the curious sort, I followed him around and would casually try to see what he was going to buy. I think it was jazz. Then I would see him at Blockbuster with a female. They both picked a video, his pick lost that night.

Then Gary Cogill and I exchanged some emails about film criticism and we even saw each other at a press screening for a Kevin Kline film that was pretty terrible. And I saw Troy Dungan in college at a Parent’s Weekend function at Baylor. But it had been a loooooooooong time since I’d seen any current WFAA team players…until Friday evening.

White shirt, pink tie. Hair looking perfect, as usual. Looked like an iced tea in a beer mug. In fact, the whole family had drinks in mugs. Three kids, two other women. The strange thing? There wasn’t a lot of talking at the table for so many people being there. Seemed kind of strange for a party of six.

The other thing that I noticed almost immediately is that the waiter that everyone else on the patio had was not attending to Delkus, party of six. They had Martin, who is one of the old timers there. He’s good. He paid attention to the Delkus party while we were waiting for refills, Delkus, party of six had refills immediately, thanks to Martin.

I guess it pays to be weather royalty in this town. Now if only us little people could get our refills in a timely manner, too.

Brush With Local Greatness, Vol. 7: Pete Delkus is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Our ragtag band of survivors killed off (or had their enemies kill themselves) their enemies, specifically Dean Stockwell’s wily Brother Cavil, who opted, instead of resurrection, to end it all with a bullet in the head. With his death I’m assuming that the Cylon threat is gone, but aren’t there more Cylons out there? And come on, that was a cheap way out. Cavil had a sweeping master plan to bring the Cylons back on top and take resurrection back to his people and he ended his life with a bullet? In the mouth? Sure, I know that Tyrol had just killed Torie and that the secret of resurrection would never be his after that, but suicide? He had the human race where he wanted it and it’s not like the guy can naturally die. Suicide seems like a lame way out for him.

But there were other things. The Opera House vision was all about the Galactica CIC? Really? What writer thought that up and how rushed to deadline were they before they thought that lame idea up? If Baltar and Six were supposed to take Hera why would Roslin and Sharon be so scared?

A huge problem with the episode? A lot of the loose ends seemed to get tied up rather loosely.

We never find out why Kara came back or or why or what she was. And you kind of knew she was going to be it but Roslin was the dying leader? Did she really lead them to Earth or did she just lead them in space? What happened to the relationship between Tigh and Six? He’d gotten her pregnant. And Head Six and Head Baltar? What was that? Are they angels? Cylons? No explanation given. Or not worth giving.

Another problem is that Ron Moore gives explanation of many of these hints on his show commentary podcasts, which is also how you would have found out that everyone who took part in Zarak and Gaeta’s failed coup d’état was put on board the prison ship. You never would have heard a single character just mention in passing, “Everyone who took part in Zarak and Gaeta’s failed coup d’état was put on board the prison ship.” I guess those 3 seconds of airtime would have eaten up too much story time.

Probably my biggest problem with the show was that way too much time was given to the battle at the Cylon colony and not enough given to the time on Earth. Several parts of the final battle seemed to drag as Colonials would walk through the Cylon hallways, guns drawn, staring straight ahead like they were…waiting for something to appear…like Bad Sharon. Or Simon. Or that PR guy. Or a battle between CG Cylons.

And too much time spent on the characters’ pasts on Caprica. Time was wasted so we could see that Roslin slept with a former student, Bill had a job interview, Anders talk about “perfection”, Tigh and Ellen drink and Lee almost sleeps with his brother’s fiance Kara. Probably collectively 45 minutes was wasted on flashbacks. Sure, it showed why some of these people survived the war, but still needless and pointless.

And because of the time crunch Earth seemed to be hurried through. We had a lot of territory to cover there and a lot of stories to wrap up, we couldn’t take a few minutes out of the pointless Lee/Kara flashback and show more of what happened to Lee on Earth?

There he was, talking to Kara, then she just upped and “disappeared” and he was alone. And that was that.

Nothing else about Lee? He’s just left alone in Africa? Alone? Without Kara? What a waste of time that was.

I think of all of the Earthbound storylines that was served the best was the Baltar/Six one. You learned that Baltar grew up on a farm and knew how to cultivate crops, so now that he has no more science equipment he’s at least going to survive. And after all they’ve been through, tall Six is going to be with short Baltar. But I don’t get Head Baltar and Head Six. I’m guessing they’re angels? I don’t know. If they’re Cylons those clothes they’ve been wearing for 150,000 years still look good.

And a logical fallacy — If the notes of “All Along the Watchtower” are given numerical values, and those numerical values, when punched into an FTL computer, take that ship to Earth, wouldn’t Jimi Hendrix’s version of the song at the end of the show technically lead whoever figured out the numerical code right back to a bombed out nuclear Earth in the future? As I’m assuming by the end of the show that the writers are hinting that our current Earth is heading down the same path as our “forefathers” did on Kobol. Maybe the next coordinates could have been put to “Dancing Queen” or “How Much is that Doggy in the Window” or “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”.

My last problem with the show was that the series was so great and well written that it felt like most of the mysteries from early on were just given short shrift because some sort of answer had to be given as an explanation for them. The final five plotline was alright but ultimately silly in the end. Kara returning from the dead was never adequately explained, the conceiving of Hera, and lots more. It was great TV but I think that the show creators owed it to their fan base to elaborate better and figure out better answers to the mysteries, even if they were convenient plotlines from seasons ago that helped propel the story along. A good example that they could have looked to was “Lost” which just seems to get better the longer it goes. The creators of it may not know where it’s going to go from season to season, but they think up new and interesting situations for the Losties to get involved in, and it’s not like the two shows have little in common. The Losties are stuck on the island (sort of) and the Colonials are stuck on the Galactica. Both sets are trying to get home and only one so far has succeeded. Let’s hope that “Lost”, with all of the expectations it has built up for itself, can pull of an ending better than “Galactica” did.

Grab Your Gun and Bring in the Cat is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Jason’s Deli, Which Wich, chopped beef, sliced turkey with honey barbecue, I love them. And if they were sentient and could feel love, they would love me too.

And so I was at Potbelly Sandwich Works the other day with Kim. I ordered the Pizza Sandwich and she got the Turkey Skinny. I had to go back to the house so I took mine with me and she met a client. About twenty minutes passes.

I eat the sandwich when I get home.

Seriously? They call this a Pizza Sandwich? Pepperoni, marinara sauce (whoever put that on pizza?), provolone(again, who put that on pizza?), mushrooms and Italian seasoning. Those are the ingredients that make up the vaunted “Pizza Sandwich”.

It was terrible. Possibly the worst sandwich I’ve ever bought at an establishment that purported to be a sandwich shop. It didn’t taste like pizza, and it didn’t even taste good. It was like the bread was a wet sponge and the “pepperoni” (all two slices) was so low rent that it needed a bailout.

I talked to Kim later and told her the Pizza Sandwich was terrible. She immediately retorted, “My sandwich was terrible too!”

So goodbye and good riddance, Potbelly Sandwich Work. You’ve been in business for 32 years but hopefully you’ll go out of business very soon and stop polluting the world with your crummy “sandwiches”.

The Potbelly Sandwich Shop is Terrible is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

But whether it’s Rob Lowe and Snow White dancing to “Proud Mary” or Savion Glover tap-dancing to the music from Schindler’s List, the musical numbers do serve their purpose. Imagine you’re the one sitting in that giant theater waiting for your name to be called as one of the honored few in your category. You’re crowded next to your co-stars and the producers, you kinda need to use the restroom but the lines are incredibly long and just at that moment the producers of the show have shined their timing wisdom on you and start showing a dance retrospective from the past eighty years of Oscars.

And all of those people that make the movies, most of them are the little guy, the guy you’ve never heard of that did something really cool with the special effects from Iron Man or The Dark Knight, shouldn’t he be honored too? Yes, he’s crammed into the boring part of the show, the part of the show that everyone watches just to see what the goofy costume designer is wearing and what bizarre political rant they’re going to go on during the Best Documentary award.

The Academy is made up of TONS of people, and they all want their moment in the sun.

What if you were that little guy? The guy that won Best Live Action Short? Wouldn’t you want your moment?

So stop complaining during the bloated, overly-long Oscars. Let’s win one for the little guy.

In Defense of a Looooong Academy Awards Show is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Not that she’s not a great character, we just haven’t had a chance to get to know and like her like we have her husband, Saul. While Saul’s personal standing had continued to rise as the years went on and the fleet continued their quest through uncharted space, Ellen died in the early parts of Season 3 after passing information over to Brother Cavill in order to get Saul out of prison. She was manipulative, cruel, evil and lascivious. She drank heavily and plotted against everyone so that her husband (and her) could benefit from others failings. She is not an easy person to like.

But Saul loved her (until he had to kill her) and still loves her, and now that he’s had his vision as he prepared to kill himself in some icy radioactive ocean on Earth he’s convinced that she’s the final Cylon.

But I wasn’t convinced about that. How to explain Starbuck and her resurrection from the dead? What about that Viper she and Leobon saw with her charred body in the cockpit? If anyone had a legitimate claim to the Final throne I thought it would be her. Maybe as the final Cylon she is the most powerful and can resurrect without the Resurrection Ship? Maybe.

But Ron Moore, creator of the re-imagined series, said -

“[Ellen and Saul Tigh have] always been Cylons, and there’s something profound about that. They’re a married couple who just have to go at it periodically and just have major issues and major problems. But the bond between the two of them was something that literally could not be broken. And I thought that was a really interesting and ultimately very positive thing to say.”

So I’m apt to believe it. And I thought it would be interesting if someone that had been killed off of the show was the final on, but not her. Maybe Billy or Dee or that little girl that died on the cruise ship during the pilot. Ellen just seems like such a…blah choice.

If and when Ellen returns (and they’ve set it up where she just has to return) how will she? Can she create herself? Will a Higher Cylon Power create her? Will she be all knowing? I doubt it. The other four don’t know anything even though they’ve been asked. Do they know the way to Earth? Nope. Do any of the Final Five have the answers to the big questions? Probably not. If they do it’s been dribbled out of their programming, like that song they all sang together, which was cute, but they don’t seem to share a hive mind of higher powers or advanced knowledge.

Will Ellen be the Know It All? Probably not.

I’d hoped (hoped hoped) it would be Tom Zarek because that way when it was (hoped it would be) revealed in the last episode that he was the final evil Cylon then Adama could nuke him and his evil compatriots. Of course, the way the storyline is progressing right now along the lines of treason and revolution Adama may have his chance to do just that. But now we know it isn’t going to be Zarek.

Oh well. Had to be somebody.

So Ellen Tigh is the Final Cylon… is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Peyton really grew to love the show. I like it too, as anyone who has read this blog before can attest to, and I’ve got my favorite characters on the show, but Peyton’s has become Mailbox, who shows up rarely more than once a show after Steve/Joe have sang their mail song and always delivers “a letter from our friends”. Mailbox wants to be a standup comedian someday but he’s rooted in place in the front yard, so it will probably be hard for him to travel.

But Peyton loves the guy (or girl, it’s hard to distinguish, since his voice has a strange timber to it) and always sings along to the mail-retrieving songs that Steve/Joe sings. And this love has translated into our everyday lives as well now. So while we’re out Peyton will now want to look inside of the mailbox when we leave on our walk and also on our return to the house. And he likes the vanity mailboxes, like the mailbox that looks like a dog at the end of the street or the stone one that has vines growing on it. But he loves all of them pretty equally.

So the next time if we show up at your house with Peyton and he has a pile of your mail in his hands, you’ll know why.

My Youngest is Obsessed With Mailboxes is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

The Internet Archive, also known as the Wayback Machine, is a wonderful thing. You can see the way Google looked a long time ago or the website of the New York Times from September 11, 2001. It’s not the fastest thing in the world (and come on, if you archive the majority of the internet for free, do you really have to answer to anybody about the speed of your servers?) but it sure is awesome.

And its awesomeness now travels over to this site. My first blog that I wrote years ago Central Services — The Minstry of Information Retrieval is on the Wayback Machine. Not all of it, sadly, but a large portion of it. So if you start seeing new posts appear in your RSS reader or you’re just poking around the site avoiding the boss, check ‘em out.

The Wayback Machine Has Resurrected a Lot of My Long Dead Posts is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Which is sad. For the past few years or so every time I’ve eaten at the Black-eyed Pea the service has been terrible. The food is *okay*, I suppose, and since there are few restaurants around that still serve the Southern-style food that most of us Texans grew up on it was like a strange oasis in a sea of Asian fusion and California Pizza Kitchen-type places. Like I said, the problem is the service is terrible. Several weeks ago we went in, again on a Sunday, and were sat fairly quickly, but then our waitress, who looked like she was charged with seven or eight tables, came by and said she’d be right back to take our drink orders. Five minutes, then ten minutes passed, no waitress, no drink order. We eventually flagged the hostess and asked if we could just have some water and rolls, since the kids were getting antsy and angry.

Ten more freaking minutes passed and no waitress to take our order. And so we left.

Jump back to last Sunday. We’re sitting at The Dixie House. It’s around 1:30 in the afternoon and there are probably eight tables full and three of the wait staff to shephard over them. Our waitress came, said she’d be right back with our drinks. Another table is sat in her section, they order drinks and then get them before we get ours. Five more minutes pass, no drinks. We finally flag down our waitress and ask where our drinks are and she stumbles over what we’d ordered. She then gets them out. The food is alright but still the service is incredibly lacking.

So we’ve made a pact: no more Black-eyed Pea. Ever.

We’re never going there again. I’ve wasted far too much money on a crummy establishment. I’m done with them.

So if anyone reads this and has a suggestion of where to find this mysteriously hard to find Southern cuisine in the Dallas area, leave a comment. If it’s good we might even ask you to go with us sometime.

Why Does the Black Eyed Peas’ Service Have to Suck So Bad? is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

But I have to agree with Corliss on his secondary point; being the end of the year this is the time for awards-caliber films, and this year is looking pretty lame. Early on I was interested in seeing Gran Torino but then my interest fizzled out for no perceptible reason even though I love Clint Eastwood. The Reader sounds so boring and Slumdog Millionaire deals with under-aged prostitution so they’re out in my book.

But Corliss doesn’t bring up the biggest glaring omission that he made about the two films that we do agree on. The Dark Knight was directed by Christopher Nolan who did the fantastic Memento several years back and John Favreau directed Iron Man. Favreau started out in indie films (Swingers, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle) and then moved on to directing (Will Ferrell’s second most underrated performance — Elf) Indie directors tend to focus more on story and plot than, say, Michael Bay or that dufus McG because their budgets are usually in the high hundred-thousands or the low millions. What’s been great about Nolan’s and Favreau’s careers is that they so far have kept the indie ethic of storytelling first and just tacking on the special effects to aide the visuals.

I doubt Iron Man or The Dark Knight will get nominated for the big awards, other than Heath Ledger, but the were enjoyable and interesting films that deserved the critical accolades, and the piles of money, that they earned.

Richard Corliss and Why the Blockbusters Were the Best Films This Year is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Everyone who’s anyone, on first hearing, just knows that John is the better songwriter. He was much cooler than Paul since Paul had gone on to be in that lame band Wings. Then Paul did “Ebony and Ivory”, which immediately disqualified him in the cool category. Paul was the pretty one that all of the girls loved while John was the rebel and resident weirdo. Who would have thought to have a bag in for peace? John. Would Paul have thought about having a bag in for peace? No of course not, because Paul was the good one.

So time passes and I see the film Imagine, starring the rebel himself, and you come away with only one thought: Man, John was a jerk. And not just a small-time jerk. His jerkiosity could have caused an eclipse. Or sank the Titanic. Or crushed the Third Reich. At one point there is a fan hanging around outside of John’s home, so John goes out to the gate and talks to the guy. He is less than friendly and actually insults the man several times.

John was a tool. But that shouldn’t discount his ability to write cool songs. “The Ballad of John and Yoko”? Genius.

And now when I listen to the Beatles albums [2. And I own and have heard all of them. Least favorite? “Yellow Submarine”] I hear the songs that Paul sang and how their much more…singable…than John’s songs. “Eleanor Rigby”, “For No One”, “Let it Be”, Paul is the winner on my scorecard. John’s got some great ones to his credit, and Paul did sing “Back in the USSR”, which I think is terrible and knocks Paul down a few notches, but the same album has “Happiness is a Warm Gun” and “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey”, which are awesome. But they don’t make John the winner. John wrote some very strange songs, which I’m sure some people like, but for me, the walrus is Paul.

Paul vs. John: Who’s the Better Songwriter? is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

We last saw our band of pilgrims as they arrived at Earth, but not the Earth that we currently know. It’s a bombed-out radioactive-looking wasteland that doesn’t look very welcoming to the voyagers from the twelve colonies. I would guess we’ll get our questions answered this season, at least I hope we do. Battlin’ Bill Adama has brought these people this far, I doubt that he’ll leave them hanging, but what about hope at this point? Most of what was keeping everyone going onboard those flying tin cans was the hope that Earth would be out there, somewhere, and that it would be habitable. It’s like getting half of a prayer answered. Sure, you made it to Earth, but are you going to like it once you get there? Good luck. Brother Cavil is still out there with his compatriots, and when they find Earth…eek.

We’ll also finally get to see the last secret Cylon. I guess after Baltar’s aborted Cylon Detector didn’t figure out that four of the Final Five weren’t human that someone we know and love will be the last one. I’m hoping that it’s not one of the top two (Adama or President Roslin), and I don’t think that the creators of the show would take so obvious a tack. My gut tells me that it could be Tom Zarek, but who knows. It would also be a complete mind f*ck if it was Billy Keikeya, who died in a barroom shootout, or Ellen Tigh, who was killed by her husband back on New Caprica.

And is Lee Adama still the president now that Roslin is back? Does she even want to be president anymore? If Lee is still president, will Zarek keep trying to influence him(another reason that I think he is a top contender for The Last One)?

My only complaint? That the Sci-Fi network survives off of people watching this one show, and because of that they aired the first ten episodes of season four and then had the audacity to hold onto the final 10 until 7 MONTHS LATER. Shame on you, Sci-Fi Channel. At least you’re finally going to air them.

And I’ve waited so long for this show to come back on. Please lord let it be good. No, be better than good, please be great and remind me why I love this show so much. Please.

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The Old Man Is Almost Back… is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

He and I read Curious George books probably twice a week thanks to the library. Curious George Goes to a Restaurant. Curious George Plays Baseball. Curious George Flies a Kite. Curious George is Bored. Things like that. You know the drill.

And no one in this country or world would know about Curious George if it wasn’t for his ubiquitous friend, the Man With the Yellow Hat (MYWH for those in the know). He has no name, no history, he just exists as the Man With the Yellow Hat. We do know a few things about him though. He is an explorer, as we know from the first Curious George book. He also appears to be wealthy, having an apartment in “the city” and a house in “the country” and because if this he is a man of leisure. There are no real world locations in Curious George, but one can assume that given the history of his creators, the husband and wife team of H.A. and Margret Rey, who fled Nazi Germany to eventually live in New York City, that New York is “the city”, but I’m completely and totally getting off topic.

The Man With the Yellow Hat is ALWAYS wearing yellow. He never wears blue. He never wears red. He never wears black. Only yellow. And it can only be yellow or else part of his persona and psyche is gone, like a war veteran who lost a limb that can still feel it itching when he gets back to “the world”. This weird character trait would make it difficult for a normal person to shop for clothes, but he does live in “the city”, so he probably gets his clothes tailor-made at some haberdasher, being a wealthy gentlemen and all.

And for the love of all that is holy, don’t lose his hat. Few things are worse than this scenario. As he said in one of the episodes of the Curious George show, which I watch with my oldest, “Without my hat, I’m just not…me.” No kidding, Man With the Yellow Hat. Then you’re just “The Man”. A generic plot point in a children’s book. He. Is. Nothing.

The Man With the Yellow Hat also seems strange just for the fact that he’s a strapping young guy in a city full of available ogling females who lives with a monkey. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! And he’s always leaving George by himself, saying things like, “Now I’ve got to conveniently go over here. Don’t get into trouble!” What does this moron think is going to happen, George is going to just sit there? Everybody in the books calls the monkey CURIOUS George. There is no “Mild-Mannered George” or “Dullard George”.

But all in all the Man With the Yellow Hat seems to live a pretty cool life. He’s an explorer, he drives a convertible, he flies a plane, he has a pet monkey. My oldest would kill for that life.

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The Man With the Yellow Hat is a Very Peculiar Man is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Facebook is a social networking site, meaning that people that you talk to already on a regular basis can now have another way of talking to you on a regular basis. You can chat, email, do little applications (I have book reviews for books I’ve read/am reading on there) and other stuff. It’s pretty easy to connect with people but not so easy to always find people you’re looking for. Say you have a friend named “Bill Smith”. Good luck finding the correct Bill Smith, especially if he didn’t include a picture of himself in his profile.

And people who are friends with other people that you’re already friends with will then try to add you as their friend (yes, it sounds complicated). Someone will want to add you to their “friend list” and then they’ll email you asking your permission. You can ignore, deny or approve their request. If you approve it you get added to their friend list, and then you two are “friends” in the virtual sense.

It only gets weird when someone that you don’t know suddenly emails you asking to be friends. I got a request the other day from someone that I literally had no idea who they were. Some girl. Supposedly we went to high school together. Did I recognize her? Nope.

So what do you do then? Be a jerk and not add her? Deny her? Or just ignore her? Or do you say, “Okay, let’s take the plunge and see where this goes.” I more often than not ignore these people. I don’t think of myself as a jerk; I just don’t want to be friends with everyone. I’m pretty selective. If I like you and I have some idea of who you are, then sure, I’ll add you, but if you’re like this girl that I’ve never met before, forget it sister, ain’t gonna happen no matter what tangential link we share. It’s like someone walks up to you on the street or in a bus and just starts talking to you. “Hey, you look familiar.” Can’t place them to save your life. Then they say, “Let’s be friends.”

I like to know who my friends are and those who aren’t my friends. What’s so wrong with that? So if I don’t know you and you want to be my friend on Facebook, think twice.

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Who Are All These People on Facebook and Why do They Want to be My Friend? is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

I’m going to do away with the email feed for awhile. I can’t get the plugin that runs it to work. Sorry.

So, if you’re reading this, and you subscribed at some time to my website’s feed, please point your eyes to the new feed in the upper right of the grey bar at the top of the screen. Thank you.

This Freaking RSS Feed Stuff… is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

And looking for work hasn’t been terrible. I’ve had quite a few nibbles on the resume, had an interview, working the emails and the phone. Something will happen soon, I can feel it. Then I won’t be Mr. Mom anymore.

But that’s not what this post is all about. It’s going to be a very big week around here. In no particular order -

1. Noah starts kindergarten. Monday August 25th, 2008. Today. Ms. Owen is his teacher. Is daddy nervous? Oh lord yes. He will be a Seahawk, as the picture to the right shows. That’s the school mascot.
2. Peyton starts mother’s day out. Is daddy nervous about this? Nah, not as much. It’s mother’s day out, not kindergarten. Minor league stuff.
3. I am finally starting the long march to the Master’s degree this week out at UTA. Colonial America to 1763 will be the first class. I couldn’t be more excited and nervous at the same time. It’s going to completely rock.

So that’s life right now. I miss writing here. Gotta finish up that Operation Downfall series. How will it end? Who knows.My bet? The Americans win. I’ve got a shiny penny riding on the outcome, believe me.

A Very Big Week is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

But I started noticing something as we were reading through the four stories that make up the collection — it’s only Harold. There are no other humans anywhere in the book. I’m probably reading too much into it, as I tend to do, but Harold is just all alone in a world of his creation Much like Scientologist Tom Cruise. where no one else is. The stories mention him looking for his home, and him drawing the chair that his mother would sit in when she read, and how he remembers where his bed is by gauging where the moon is in his window, but other than that Harold is never in a real world.

Now, it could just be that he’s dreaming and you just never see him wake up, and that’s the more-than-likely answer to the whole thing, or it could be (and I’m just hypothesizing here, brainstorming if you will)maybe Harold is crazy and trapped in his own mind and the purple crayon is some sort of enabler for him to get out of his inner insanity, or maybe he’s been transported into a “Twilight-Zone“y place of sight and sound but no dimension other than 2-D and he only has a crayon to help him escape.…

I am reading way too much into it. My son likes the story. That’s enough.

The Underlying Sadness of “Harold and the Purple Crayon” is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Downfall would have been the largest amphibious landing in history, including 42 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, 400 destroyers and other ships. Fourteen U.S. divisions A division is a large military unit usually consisting of around ten to twenty thousand soldiers. would take part also as they used Okinawa as a staging base and then seized the southern portion of the island of Kyushu. The invasion was scheduled to start on November 1, 1945. But there were some other considerations that the planners had to take into account.

There was, naturally, to be a deception plan leading up to the Olympic invasion. By having such a plan it was hoped, as all deception plans in war were, that Allied casualties would be minimized because the enemy force would believe that it needed to focus itself elsewhere. The plan to precede Olympic was Operation Pastel, wherein which the Joint Chiefs of Staff would attempt to fool the Japanese into thinking that a direct invasion of the southern islands had been rejected and instead that the Allies would focus first on Japanese forces still in mainland China. The first strike would be a false Allied attack on China’s Chusan-Shanghai area, with a fictional landing date of October 1, 1945. This was to be followed by one of the smaller southern Japanese islands, Shikoku. After this the Allies hoped to surprise the Japanese with the Olympic invasion.

All of this was leading up to X-Day, as it was called, where the Alllied forces would invade Kyushu along the eastern, southeastern, southern and western coasts of the island near the towns of Miyazaki, Ariake, and Kushikino. The invasion force was to consist of three main groups landing on 35 different beaches, all codenamed after makes of automobiles. The Eastern Assault Force consisting of the 25th, 33rd and the 41st Infantry Divisions, would land near Miyaski and quickly move inland to capture Miyazaki and its nearby airfield. The Southern Force which was to consist of the 1st cavalry Division, the 43rd Division and American Division would land inside Ariake Bay and capture Shibushi and to capture, further inland, the city of Kanoya and its surrounding airfield. On the western shore of Kyushu near Kushikino the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Marine Divisions would land and split, part of which would head inland to capture Sendai while the other half captured the port city of Kagoshima. Once these areas were secured more Allied reinforcements consisting of three American divisions would be brought in each month to strengthen the hold on the occupied portion of Kyushu.

Before and during all of this activity the U.S. Twentieth Air Force would be bombing strategic targets such as railroads, airfields and the various beaches that were to be hit. With a successful bombing campaign it was hoped that they could minimize any fast means that reinforcements could utilize to arrive at the various invasion points.

The four month timetable for Olympic was not to conquer the entire island but to gain a foothold for the Allies to jump off of and use as a staging ground for the even bigger invasion — Coronet. More on it in part 3.

(The info for this piece came, once again, from Wikipedia, the the Combined Arms Research Library)

Operation Downfall, Part II is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

The evil on the show is Gabriel Gray, a nerdy watch repairman who took the lame moniker of Sylar from one of the brands of watches he fixed. He is able to acquire other powers by (he thinks, but I’m not so sure) eating other hero-type people’s brains. Lovely.

The first season was fun and I stuck around to see if New York would indeed be destroyed by the man who can’t control his powers, Peter Petrelli. Peter had acquired nuclear capabilities from Ted Sprague. Peter, unlike Sylar, gets powers by being around people who already have the power he will develop. I think Sylar operates the same way but he just doesn’t know it.

Half the joy of season one was watching Hiro, the time-traveling Japanese office worker, discover his ability and then realize that it can be fun as well as powerful. His journey, of all of them, has been the most enjoyable to watch as he grows.

Anyway, there was this “mastermind” named Daniel Linderman (he has powers too — regeneration) who was going to bring about a new age by having Peter Petrelli destroy New York with his nuclear capabilities and then get Peter’s brother Nathan elected president. Nathan helped Peter get out of the city by flying up into the stratosphere before exploding. In the “destroy NY” show Linderman is shot to death, right through the head, and can’t regenerate. He’s dead. Really dead.

Which brings me around to now. Ain’t It Cool News is linking to a story where someone from the BBC is giving away what’s in a season 3 ‘Heroes’ promo. I’m talking spoilers, so if you care and watch the show, skip the next paragraph.

LINDERMAN IS BACK?

What?! Why can’t they kill anyone on this show and not have them stay dead?! Why can’t someone just die and be really dead?! The freaking guy was SHOT IN THE HEAD. Kill him! Kill him! Have him be dead, really dead! Bad guys, even SUPER BAD GUYS, die! Come on, man, just kill someone off of this show and have him be gone! He wasn’t that cool or anything. Even his name is lame. He was even lamer than the guy that could paint the future.[1. Don’t even get me started on how cool it would have been to have Hiro fighting a Tyrannosaurus. That would have rökked.] Jeez.

And man, I’ve hung on even through the lame new characters they tried to introduce last season where all I wanted was for the girl who’s eyes turn black to die. The sweet release of her death would have been a high point of last season, but no, they had to have her “fall in love” with Sylar. She’s as lame as Nikki and Paulo on “Lost” were and the creators of “Lost” were smart enough to kill them off! Kill Black Eyed Girl! Kill her as soon as possible!

The list of people on the show with powers just keeps growing. Nikki, who supposedly died in an explosion, I’m sure will turn up alive. Nathan, who was shot at the end of last season right before he “came out” about his flying power, I’m sure will be back too. Claire’s dad, who’s death was very powerful on the show, was resurrected. Sylar himself probably was dead but they’ve brought him back to annoy us with his “my-head-is-down-but-I’m-looking-at-you” eyes and stupid way of talking again. And Hiro can’t even kill a bad guy; he has to bury him in a coffin alive. The guy he buried is immortal so I’m sure he’ll turn up again, as usual.

The only one that I really am glad is back is Hiro’s friend Ando. Ando is one of the few people on the roster without powers which is probably why I like him so much. Can’t we have fewer people with powers? To see their perspective on those with powers? And can’t this freaking show thin the ranks a little bit before the whole planet is on the show because, you know, they ALL have powers?

I’m (Probably) Done Watching “Heroes” is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Have You Ever Actually Read the Declaration of Independence? is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

The conference had many other factors to think about also. How could they force an unconditional Japanese surrender with the least amount of Allied casualties in the shortest period of time? Originally a joint British-American team had written a document entitled “Appreciation and Plan for the Defeat of Japan” where they didn’t foresee an invasion until after 1947 but the conference felt that dragging the war out that far would have dangerous consequences to American morale at home. And not only would the Allies face Japanese military units but also a “fanatically hostile population”. Fighting the Japanese military was one thing, facing an entire population armed with various weapons carrying out banzai attacks was another. The death toll on both sides could have been tremendous.

In light of this the US Navy urged a sea blockade and airpower to bring about surrender. The US Army Air Force, using captured airbases in China and Korea would be able to bombard Japan into submission.[2. A sea blockade had helped the US defeat another enemy roughly 80 years previous to this — The Confederate States of America.] The US Army, though, believed that the strategy could prolong the war for an indeterminate amount of time and needlessly waste lives. In light of this the Army’s opinion won out.

And so planning on the two-part invasion began. It was to be broken into two operations, Olympic and Coronet with Olympic scheduled to begin on X-Day — November 1, 1945.[3. Info for this post came from both Military History Encyclopedia on the Web and Wikipedia.]

We’ll talk about the first phase, Olympic, next time.

Operation Downfall, Part I is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

So who is this guy? Where is his white makeup? Does he have a pet? What make and model is his tiny car? Why is he trying to be non-frightening and generically non-threatening?

This clown is known as Bello. He works for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Time magazine called him “America’s Best Clown.”

Oh really? Is this what fearsome and horrifying clowns have come to in the 21st century? Wimpified lame-o’s who’s gimmick is that he has tall hair and gets into all sorts of wacky mischief? Take away the hair and turn him into a monkey and he’s Curious George. George even goes to the circus too.

Over the past years Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey has been on the ropes a little bit as people start loving more and more the weird antics of Cirque du Soleil. Is Bello the answer to their problems? Are people going to start coming to the circus to see this guy? Is he that big of a draw? Why do I feel that the answer is “no”?

I’m a dad, so I have to go. Would I go just to see this guy? Well.…

The Sad, Slow Decline of the Clown is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

And now is the time of year that the yard is finally kicking into high gear. The grass is growing, the flowers are blooming, the ground cover is covering but of course the problem with all of this is that all of these things have upkeep and care involved. If I lived (as my brother does) in Las Vegas I would guess my front yard would be a nice plot of rocks or pebbles or sand with some cactus and other sharp weather-hardy plants there. Not great for the kids but able to survive even the worst heat wave or atomic test. But this isn’t Vegas, it’s Dallas, where we do actually get rain sometimes during the summer, and that means that the grass is still growing, the flowers are still blooming and the ground cover is still covering.

Yard work in that kind of weather is hard, especially without a self-propelled lawnmower, which I don’t have. Yard work for me has always been one of those things that I have to do — I’m the man, I must care for the yard even if I don’t care for the yard, which I don’t, because the only time that mowing the yard is not a risk to your well-being around these parts is in early spring. So about every weekend I’ll go out to the shed, pull out the weed eater and the lawnmower and the blower and drag all of them back to the front yard and then run the weed eater and then the mower and then the blower and by that time I’m completely burning up and ready to lay down and die right there in the front yard. If only Hudson from Aliens had been right. [1. “Yeah man, but it’s a DRY heat!]

But we’re living in the freaking 21st Century, a time of jet packs and flying cars and nanotechnology and Ubuntu and cool stuff like that. Robots these days are still pretty primitive, at least on the consumer side. We don’t have cool robots yet like R2-D2 or C-3P0 or even HAL. You’ve got that stupid Robosapien and that weird talking Fairy Dora and the even creepier looking Alive Elvis. I saw Alive Elvis at Macy’s before Christmas and he was going for $250. After Christmas? $50. Nobody wants a creepy singing/talking Elvis yet.

There are two robots that I could live with right now. The Roomba and the Robomow. Two robots that do things that no one wants to do — vacuum and mow the yard. As you can tell, I could learn to love the Roomba, but man what I wouldn’t give for a Robomow. Being able to just sit up on the porch with the kids and the wife having breakfast on a warm summer morning while that wonderful little robot mows the yard for me. Sure, he doesn’t do weed eating or blowing the excess grass away, but if I didn’t have to mow would I even care? Probably not.

So come on Skynet, materialize from the minds of 21st Century Man. Give me a Robomow and I would gladly let your Terminators rule o’er me. At least in the summer when you robots don’t care if it’s hot.

If They’ll Mow My Yard, I’ll Welcome Our Robot Overlords Willingly is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

But on the lighter side of having the possibility of the Union torn asunder forever, he was the tallest president we’ve had — 6 ft 4 in. [1. He narrowly beats out Lyndon B. Johnson who comes in just under Lincoln at 6 ft 3½ in. Johnson was also known for using the toilet in front of underlings he wanted to intimidate.] He often would talk about how he never had to look up to anybody since he was always the tallest man in the room. On meeting a wounded Union soldier that was taller than him, he remarked, “Hello, comrade. Do you know when your feet get cold?”

James Madison, the president that got us into probably our most pointless war [2. The War of 1812. You remember it — Washington D.C. got burned by the British?] was our shortest president, coming in at just 5 ft 4 in.

And our tallest first lady? Eleanor Roosevelt. She was 6 ft tall. While Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd, was probably our shortest first lady, measuring in at 5 ft 2 in. [3. The info for this piece came from WIkipedia and also from “Lincoln’s War: The Untold Story of America’s Greatest President as Commander in Chief” by Geoffrey Perret.]

Our Tallest and Shortest Presidents is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

And it gets you thinking about surviving something terrifying : could I do it? How would I get my family out alive? Where would we go? What would we do about food and water? Could I trust my fellow living humans? Even my own neighbors? ‘Cause you never know what people will do when faced with the end of modern civilization and we’re suddenly living in the Dark Ages all over again. Everybody, let’s party like it’s 999!

Being Mr. ADD my mind will wander sometimes so when I’m stuck in the break room the other day waiting for the microwave to finish warming my lunch up I look over at the ice machine. Hanging off of it is a pretty hefty ice scoop probably measuring about 12 inches by 5 inches by 5 inches. The thing is big.

So I hefted it off of the scratch-built hook that it hangs off of and raise it up. Could I cleave a skull with this? Would a machete be better in close zombie combat? How would I get out of this breakroom if my office were infested with the undead bodies of the people I work with? Could I differentiate between their living and undead selves?

Somebody came in after that. He was taller than me. What if he was a zombie? He’s pretty tall, could I cut his head off with this thing?

I took my lunch back to my cube and started looking around at more items in my general vicinity. I have a knife but a knife in zombie combat is going to be pretty useless — no point in stabbing them. Could I crush a head with a laptop? My monitor weighs as much as a car so it’s useless too. The cube walls aren’t too tall, I could escape over them if I got pinned down and there’s a pretty hefty door right near my cube. That could my my escape route, but what if there were more zombies behind that hunting for fresh brains?

There’s a guy that sits at the end of my row. I sometimes wish he were a zombie so I could cleave his head with an ice scooper.

I Can’t Stop Thinking of Ways to Kill Zombies at the Office is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

June 6, 1944 is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

For the whole time the band never really changed, appearance-wise — makeup, black clothing, teased hair. Smith, who’s approaching 50, still pretty much has the same look that he acquired in the early 1980’s.

Why does he still look like this?

David Bowie had his glam phase and he outgrew it. Michael Stipe of previously mentioned R.E.M. even wore makeup for awhile but then he gave it up. What gives, Robert?

Well, maybe he’s a better looking man WITH makeup. Not that he’s a good looking guy to begin with, but yikes, if the makeup improves your look, then continue on, sir. If not, grow up. You just look silly now.

Why Does Robert Smith Still Wear Makeup? is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

And so I was perusing it the other day and came across a headline, written with, as usual for AICN, with too many exclamation points -

Lucas Talks INDY 5!!

Wha…? More Indiana Jones movies? Isn’t Harrison Ford getting too old (Of course, it’s not the age, it’s the mileage.) to do this kind of stuff anymore? Shouldn’t he be the loving father in a Sandra Bullock or Kate Hudson movie? Why not an arty drama, Harrison, like the Michael Douglas role you turned down in Traffic?

But then again George Lucas has never seen a bad opportunity to return to the well too many times. The second Star Wars trilogy was enough to prove that and once again Lucas is bringing the anger to himself. From AICN, quoting a Fox News article -

“I haven’t even told Steven or Harrison this,” he said. “But I have an idea to make Shia [LeBeouf] the lead character next time and have Harrison [Ford] come back like Sean Connery did in the last movie. I can see it working out.

“And it’s not like Harrison is even old. I mean, he’s 65 and he did everything in this movie. The old chemistry is there, and it’s not like he’s an old man. He’s incredibly agile; he looks even better than he did 20 years ago, if you ask me.”

Come on, George! Leave. It. Alone! It was bad enough that you guys had to make just one more Indy film, we might have another 2 or 3 films where Indy is hobbling around while his son is the hero?

Good God, man, when are you going to know when to say when? Stop it! Just stop!

George Lucas Needs to Have Fewer Ideas is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Joe, to the untrained eye, appears to be Joe-like, but he acts far more juvenile than Steve Burns ever did. Watching him you get the feeling, and it’s probably not Donovan Patton’s [2. The guy that plays Joe] fault. Steve, towards the end of his tenure on the show, seemed to be getting more and more cerebral. He would lift an eyebrow for effect here, a slight double-take there. He even used the word ‘jejune’ on the show.

Then Steve’s brother Joe showed up right as Steve was going away to college.

The producers probably wanted to go back to the more kid-friendly format of the early years of the show but after watching Burns Patton’s delivery seemed so pre-preschoolish.

When singing the signature song he looks longingly at the screen like he honestly doesn’t remember from program to program that he needs to use his notebook or find a clue. For god’s sake, in one episode he didn’t know where his nose was. Or his ear. Who in their right mind doesn’t know where his nose is? If you’re Joe, then you don’t, obviously.

The whole “Steve goes to college” angle was alright, since Burns wanted to leave the show, and, from his own website “we have male pattern baldness.” Steve was looking a little long in the tooth. But how could “Steve” get into college? He couldn’t find clues (as far as I know he only found one and that was in the “Blue’s Big Musical” episode) so how did he get into college? And what college is it? Stupid U?

But at least Steve got into college. Joe, the stupid brother, has been stuck at home for years now, living out his pre-preschoolish existence with a talking mailbox, some talking salt and pepper shakers, and a bar of soap that wants to be a ship captain. Maybe Joe is crazy and the “Blue’s Clues” show is all in his head, or maybe Steve was crazy and, living in the Bluesiverse, made up a brother out of thin air so he could escape his own insanity. Think about it. I could happen. Sorta Being John Malkovich–esque. Or like the ending of “Saint Elsewhere”. Maybe Joe is dreaming up the whole thing. Wouldn’t surprise me if he did.

Man, Joe from “Blue’s Clues” is Dumb is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

“The lake” is White Rock Lake, and people of all shapes and sizes go there in the very early morning hours to run, walk, jog and ride bikes. It’s a lovely tranquil place to just drive (or run, walk, jog or ride bikes) around the lake and look out at the water. Noah loves going there to feed ducks and also try his hand at (very amateurish) fishing. I like to go look at the gigantic houses and just while away a little time before I realize how much money I’m blowing on gas.

So Peyton and I were driving and I’d come to the southern portion of the lake where the road diverges from the lakeside and I was out in residential land again and there’s a pack of about 20 bicyclists coming towards me. I knew from learning to ride a bike that the safest way to ride is towards traffic in a single file line, but these bicyclists were only doing the former and not the latter. Because of this there was a giant swarm of bikes and we were on a collision course with each other.

But I kept driving towards them. “They’ll realize they’re going to be killed and they’ll avoid me, the larger vehicle.” This did not happen.

I drove on, approaching them at about 35 mph. They kept on coming straight at me.

I got to about 15 feet from them before I steered clear of them. I also gave them a very noticeable finger, letting them know that I was number one and they weren’t.

The arrogance of some people! Where do they get off thinking that naturally I, the automobile driver, am going to avoid them just because they are on bicycles? “We are exercising and you are contributing to making Dallas one of the fattest cities in America,” was what I assumed they were thinking as they pedaled on.

So bicyclists, this is your warning. I will take you arrogant muthas down!

Dear Bicyclists : I Totally Hate Your Guts is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

The Longest and Shortest Major League Baseball Games is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

And often you’ll put a lot of effort and caring into choosing that special birthday party gift. What does the child like? What is the age range on the gift? Does it have small parts and do they have a younger sibling that might choke on those parts? You want to make sure that you don’t get something that the kid won’t play with because more and more stores aren’t letting you return, or even exchange for that matter, toys that don’t have a receipt with them. You end up putting a lot of research into determining just what kind of present you’re going to buy.

But lately there’s a new trend that until now I hadn’t noticed — the host of the birthday party (the birthday partier, if you will) not opening their gifts that the invited got for said partier until after the party’s over and everyone’s gone home.

After your effort, aren’t you entitled to a little closure with that present that you took care to find and wrap? What’s up with that? You take your present to the party, your child has fun, and then you leave without the host opening their gifts. It’s like watching all the way up until the end of Star Wars and not seeing if the Rebels destroy the Death Star.

Anyway, I’m sounding the klaxon that this is a completely uncool trend. Let it end now, parents of would-be present non-openers. Don’t even try it, muthas.

A Disturbing Trend in Children’s Birthday Parties is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

I always wanted one. I never got one.

They were awesome. Your face would be warm out in the cold. An efficient piece of clothing for keeping your nose from freezing.

Of course, if you wear one now, people look at you a little funny. You can see it on their faces. “Who’s that shady, yet warm, character over there? Is he going to rob me? Kill me? Maybe blow up a bomb?”

Everyone thinks you’re a terrorist or a bank robber or a mugger now if you wear a ski mask. Which is why I want to rehabilitate the ski mask’s reputation. Who’s with me?

I want a ski mask just so I can drive around with one on. People may stare but I’ll only do good thing while wearing my ski mask — help the environment, care for old people, be kind to animals, go shopping for groceries, all while wearing my trusty, warm and woolly ski mask.

Why can’t we all love the ski mask again? It never stopped loving us.

Why is Everyone Scared of You When You’re Wearing a Ski Mask? is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

And the dinosaurs are pretty cool. They move and make noises and stuff like that, but rather than just make them dinosaurs who coexist with each other, Fisher Price has turned it into a battle. From the Fisher Price site -

Imagine…a primitive civilization of humans and dinosaurs, living in a lush, green land. One side—the predators—are using up its natural resources, wiping out everything and everyone that gets in their way. The other side—the ecovores—want to preserve their land. And they’re willing to fight to make that happen.Will the predators succeed in destroying the land, causing their own extinction? Or will the ecovores stop the destruction and make the land a place where dinosaurs and humans can live together peacefully? In the world of Imaginext®, anything is possible!

Is it possible? Really? “If I had a hammer.…”

Let me ask you this — did the predators win? Or the ecovores?

I don’t want to give this away, gentle reader, especially if you don’t know how this whole thing ends, but I really, really can’t help myself. I’m sorry. It’s just too difficult to keep such spoilerific information all to myself.

Okay, I’ll say it — they both lost!

Here’s how it happened.

The place is Pangea, and our enemies, the Predators and the Ecovores, are meeting up and about to have one of those mother-of-all battles, you see, and there they were, Razor and Ripper and Slasher and all of their allies, and they were moving in for the kill on Whip, Thunder, Tank and Hammer, when out of the blue, they heard something in the sky. They stopped their running and slashing and biting and looked up, quizzically, to the sky.

“ROWR?“
“ROWRROWR!“
“RUHROWR?“
“RUH…ROWR!”

BANG.

And thus died the Imaginext Dinosaurs as that big comet hit the Earth and destroyed them all. Sadly, they, and their political agendas, were lost in the coming ice age.

Can’t we just let them be toys?

I Already Know How the Imaginext Dinosaur War Will Turn Out is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Kim, never one to shirk from making a comment, had the guts to pipe up when she said that she lived on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

“We had our honeymoon there!”

It kind of threw Charo [1. Yes, I know Charo does not live in Dallas, but she was there, and we talked to her. So there.] off, but hen became excited. She was bonding with the audience, you know. “Oh, did you love it? Where did you stay?”

“South side of the island at a B&B.”

“The B&B’s on Kauai are wonderful, aren’t they?”

“Yes!!!” Kim was so excited.

What was even cooler was she even took a picture with us. She was wearing a red sequined minidress and was completely falling out the thing. We were going to use the picture for our Christmas card (“Merry Christmas from Kim, Glenn and Charo”) but Kim was laughing when the picture was taken and her smile was Joker-esque, so we didn’t use it, but, you know, it’s still a great story.

Brush With Local Greatness, Vol. 6 : Charo is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

1) Damon has said no more Bourne films after this one.

I understand what he’s doing here. He wants to be identified with something else besides Jason Bourne ((Maybe he shouldn’t do any more of the Ocean’s movies then, either.)), but that doesn’t make it any easier.

2) The amazingly cool Brian Cox is gone.

I love Brian Cox. He’s one of the great character actors of his generation and seeing his character Abbott kill himself in The Bourne Supremacy was heartbreaking for me. I was very disappointed when he turned out to be a bad guy because up until that moment that he stabbed his lackey he was just a great amoral character.

3) More shaky camera fight scenes.

One of my big criticisms between the first and second films was the way hand-to-hand combat scenes were filmed. Doug Liman filmed the scene in Bourne’s Paris apartment from about 10 feet back, allowing you to see what was going on with the knife/pen fighting. Paul Greengrass shot the fight scene inside of the house in Germany way too close to the action and with far too many edits for my taste. French director Jean-Luc Godard ((If you don’t know him, Godard was one of the most influential members of the French New Wave movement in film. The New Wavers experimented radically with editing, visual style, and narrative, and the movement has been claimed to influence many movies, from Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde all the way to Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Wes Andersen’s The Royal Tenenbaums.)) said “Every edit is a lie,” and it’s true. I would have preferred a more continuous feel to the combat than a shaky pile up of visuals.

4) No more Franka Potente.

Unless some miracle happened in that Indian river, Marie’s not coming back. That’s too bad.

And unless there’s a huge plot change, this is how it will all go down — the CIA will find Bourne somewhere and try to dispose of him. Bourne will rely on his training and smarts and will outwit all of them and overcome his adversaries. In the end he will be more paranoid than ever.

I’m sure it will be good, though. We’ll see.

What I’m Not Looking Forward to With The Bourne Ultimatum is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

And so that dirty hippie was loping through the hordes, probably going somewhere in a slow and “keep on truckin’” kinda way, when I saw him. He was the weatherman that I’d grown up with, and I knew his daughter was attending his alma mater at the same time that I was. His trademark bow ties were legendary around Dallas from the first time I remember him and he wore them every newscast, no matter what. He’d always been short, you could tell that by comparing him to the other news anchors on the channel 8 sound stage, but I didn’t know he’d be that short. I’m talking like Danny Devito height, no kidding, the man was SHORT. Like 5′ 2″ or something.

As I brushed by him (literally) he seemed startled. I mumbled, “Hi there.” He didn’t say anything, just sorta glared.

I thought, “Man, what a jerk.”

And that was my close encounter of the weather kind with Troy Dungan. He’d started working for WFAA on July 19, 1976, and he’s retiring tomorrow, July 18, 2007. From what his collegues say he’s a swell guy. I’m sure he is and was just probably scared of that dirty hippie kid way back when. So long, Troy. Happy trails.

Brush With Local Greatness, Vol. 5 : Troy Dungan is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

So…how does the Secretary of Education skip all of that running for President and the election and just become President of the United States? Why, have everyone in front of you in the line of presidential succession die! Want to know the current line of succession? [1. I got this list from infoplease.] Well, here it is -

1. Vice President of the United States and President of the Senate
2. Speaker of the House of Representatives
3. President of the Senate pro tempore [2. The President of the Senate pro tempore is the second-highest-ranking official of the United States Senate and the highest-ranking senator. The current President of the Senate pro tempore is Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia).]
4. Secretary of State
5. Secretary of the Treasury
6. Secretary of Defense
7. Attorney General
8. Secretary of the Interior
9. Secretary of Agriculture
10. Secretary of Commerce
11. Secretary of Labor
12. Secretary of Health and Human Services
13. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
14. Secretary of Transportation
15. Secretary of Energy
16. Secretary of Education
17. Secretary of Veterans Affairs
18. Secretary of Homeland Security [3. On March 9, 2006, President George W. Bush signed HR 3199 which renewed the Patriot Act and amended the Presidential Succession Act to include the Secretary of Homeland Security in the line of succession after the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.]

President Margaret Spellings? is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

“About how big?” Mr. Mitchell asked them. At the time the moon was rising, so a miner held out his hands, framing the moon in them and said, “About that big!”

He headed back to the bakery after making his rounds and saw some of the workers dipping graham crackers into marshmallow and laying them on window sills to harden. With a concept for the perfect working man’s snack, he added another cookie and a coating of chocolate and sent them back for the workers to try. When the response they got was favorable he sent samples around with their other salespeople, too. The MoonPie was a hit.

The usual way to enjoy a MoonPie in the 1950’s was with an RC Cola, which, when couple with a MoonPie, cost about 10 cents. RC was preferred since the RC bottle was a little larger than that of Coca-Cola. The two became inseparable and was often referred to as “The Working Man’s Lunch.” [1. The info for this piece came from the maker of one half of the Working Man’s Lunch — The Chattanooga Bakery.]

The Birth of the MoonPie is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

He refused an appointment of first lieutenant in his company on account of his age (he was 16 at the time) and instead was made a non-commissioned staff-officer. Upon entry of his unit into the war he was promoted to captain of Company A, 97th Pennsylvania Volunteers on August 22, 1861. Roughly a month later he was promoted again, this time to major.

He remained with the 97th for many years, where he was well respected and liked by his men. By the time 1864 rolled around, and after seeing much action and combat, he had been promoted to colonel.

Pennypacker’s greatest moment of the war came at the second battle of Fort Fisher [2. Fort Fisher was a Confederate fort during the American Civil War. It protected the vital trading routes of the port at Wilmington, North Carolina, from 1861 until its capture by the Union in 1865. The fort was located on one of Cape Fear River’s two outlets to the Atlantic Ocean on what is today known as Pleasure Island.] on January 15, 1865, where he was severely wounded while crossing enemy lines. Because of his bravery in leading his men and his wounding in the battle he was awarded Congressional Medal of Honor with a citation reading -

“He gallantly led the charge over a traverse and planted the colors of one of his regiments thereon; was severely wounded.”

After the battle Pennypacker was given a brevet [3. A brevet promotion is a temporary authorization for a person to hold a higher rank. It happened frequently in the Civil War.] promotion to Brigadier General on January 15, 1865. After convalescing, he received a full promotion to brigadier general at age 20, making him the youngest officer to hold the rank of general in the United States Army to this day. He was brevetted, once again, to major general on March 13, 1865. He was not yet 21 years old.

Galusha Pennypacker, the Youngest Brigadier General in U.S. Army History is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

In her favor, she’s been in some fine movies but that doesn’t mean that she’s been fine in them. Several cases in point I’ll go over here — Dave, The Truman Show and Breach. Let’s break ‘em down.

I loved and continue to love Dave. Why wouldn’t I love it, given that it was the first “date” I went on with my wife in college? In Dave, Kevin Kline is thrust into the role of President of the United States when the man (the real President) he was doubling for has a massive stroke. Linney plays the Oval Office secretary that the real President was having an affair with when he had the stroke and her “fawning” and “relief” when the “President” returns to office ring hollow. You can tell that Dave is a little freaked out by her reaction and with good reason — he has no idea who she is and she’s chomping at the scenery. Not a good choice for a rather important plot point.

I also love The Truman Show and still think that Jim Carrey has the makings of an actual living breathing actor in him, if he can just get away from mainstream fare like Fun with Dick and Jane or Bruce Almighty. But in The Truman Show, Linney once again rears her bad-actor head, this time in the role of Meryl, Carrey’s television wife. She’s over-the-top skittish and not likable at all, and maybe that’s the point, but it doesn’t make her sympathetic in any way when she breaks down while Carrey interrogates her in their kitchen about his situation. The only good that could have come from that scene would have been if Carrey had killed Meryl with that jar of Mococoa she was holding.

And what can you say about her in Breach? It wasn’t a big money maker, but it wasn’t a bad movie at all, far from it. It was better than I thought it would be, but Linney plays tough-as-nails FBI agent Kate Burroughs, and she wasn’t a very good choice for the part. Get someone else, Holly Hunter, Jodie Foster, just don’t pick Linney to talk tough to Ryan Phillippe. It’s flat and silly and we know that she’s doing the one thing she doesn’t want you to know she’s doing : acting. She was just wrong for the part.

In her favor though she’s done some wonderful (or at least, good) films also where she too has been wonderful. You Can Count on Me, where she plays big brother to the way-cool Mark Ruffalo, is excellent, and she is too. She’s also great in Love Actually as the pathetically lonely Sarah who pines away for Rodrigo Santoro. She hits all the right notes as she tries to woo Santoro and take care of her mentally imbalanced brother. And while it wasn’t (any) good, The Life of David Gale featured her as an anti-death penalty advocate and she was very good. It always seems that the parts she’s best in are where she’s a pathetic little creature trying to get by in the world or fight for a higher cause. Unfortunately, you don’t get too far in Hollywood playing the same character over and over. [2. Or maybe you can. Case in point — Robin Williams.]

When Linney’s good and cast in the right character she’s great, but when she seems completely out of her league it’s embarrassing to watch. I just don’t “get” Laura Linney. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Is Laura Linney a Good Bad Actress or a Bad Good Actress? is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

The truck driver stopped. “Was that your cat?”

Taylor replied, “No.”

The driver nodded and started driving again, leaving the squished cat in the street. We all went outside to look at the flat cat and then called our friends to tell them what just happened. Patrick, Josh and Willie were amazed by the story and how quickly it all happened.

Later I went with Patrick’s girlfriend Kim to find the Branch Davidian compound. The compound was outside of town, not in Waco as so many newscasters said. It was getting dark and you could see the spotlights that the FBI was using from miles away. We started driving, just following the lights. We never found exactly how to get to the compound, as the ranch was on several back country roads, but we had fun just driving around and looking for it.

Kim dropped me off at our apartment, and as I stepped up to the front door I noticed something in the doorway. There, with string tied around its two front paws and taped up to the inside of the doorway so it stood up, was the dead cat. It’s squished little body no longer bleeding, there was a scrawled sign reading “YOU KILLED ME” in red ink made up to look like blood.

I stepped over the cat and went inside, finding Joel and Taylor. I showed them the cat and we knew immediately who’d done this — Patrick, Josh and Willie.

Joel and Taylor carried the cat out to the garbage, then we called Patrick, Josh and Willie. They feigned innocence of the whole matter at first, but after hardly any interrogation they fessed up and said that they had done it. They’d thought it would be funny for us to leave our apartment the next morning on our ways to class and see the tiny crushed cat sitting there in our path.

It was about at that moment that we heard some banging around out at the garbage. We opened the door, while still on the phone, and peeked out at the garbage. There, dumping bottles and cans into the garbage, were 3 men in a truck. They continued to dump their trash until someone sneezed or something and they heard us. The 3 of them jumped into the truck and took off, very quickly. It was kind of strange, we thought.

And then we remembered the cat. We walked out to the garbage and, yes, the cat was gone. They’d taken a squished dead cat.

Probably going to use it in some satanic ritual or something, but the sickos had taken the dead cat.

The Dead Cat Story is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

In 1792, Alexander Chisholm of South Carolina, the executor of the estate of Robert Farquhar, attempted to sue the state of Georgia in the Supreme Court over payments due them for goods that Farquhar had supplied Georgia during the American Revolutionary War. In 1793, U.S. Attorney General Edmund Randolph argued the case for the plaintiff before the Court in “Chisholm v. Georgia”. Georgia refused to appear, claiming that as a “sovereign,” a state did not have to appear in court to hear a suit against it to which it did not consent.

The Court, in a 4–1 decision, found in favor of the plaintiff, with Chief Justice Jay concurring with Justices Blair, Wilson, and Cushing ((That would be John Blair, James Wilson and William Cushing.)), with Justice James Iredell dissenting. ((The Court has fluctuated in membership size over the course of the history of the United States. The Judiciary Act of 1789 set the size originally at 6, but it was as high as 10 in 1863. With the Circuit Judges Act of 1869, the number of Justices was again set at nine (the Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices), where it has remained ever since.)) The Court argued that Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution abrogated the States’ sovereign immunity and granted federal courts the affirmative power to hear disputes between private citizens and States.

In 1795, largely as a result of the Chisolm decision, the Eleventh Amendment was ratified, which removed federal jurisdiction in cases where citizens of one state or foreign countries attempt to sue another state. However, citizens of one state or foreign countries can still use the Federal courts if the state consents to be sued or if Congress, pursuant to a valid exercise of Fourteenth Amendment remedial powers, abrogates the states’ immunity from suit. ((The facts for this piece come from Ask Yahoo! and Oyez! The U.S. Supreme Court Media site.))

The First Supreme Court Case is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

He ordered his food and he and his compatriot sat down at a booth, chatting and waiting for their food. When his buzzer/coaster went off he sauntered up, not a care in the world and, upon receiving his food, returned to his booth and ate. No one really paid much attention to him since he really didn’t look like The Don Henley that you see pictures of and remember from The Eagles and his illustrious solo career.

But my history with the Donster went back even further than that.

Don was born in Gilmer, Texas, which is about 20 miles northwest of Longview. From what I know about the man, he lives out at Caddo Lake along the Texas/Louisiana border and is a big environmentalist out there. I guess I would be too, given the fact that Caddo Lake is one of the few natural lakes our state has. Anyway, his Texan credentials are true and up to date.

I’d also heard, back in the time when the Internet was young, that he also has a house in Dallas, somewhere…out in the hinterlands. Which brings us to my first brush with Don Henley.

It was 1995 and I was working at the Bookstop near the Inwood theater (Where, it seems, I meet almost everyone famous that I know) and in strolls Don Henley. He wanted to know where Mary Karr’s bestselling memoir, The Liar’s Club, was shelved. Per our training, I looked it up and walked to where the book was kept. Most of Ms. Karr’s other books were kept in the Poetry section, and since the Bookstop gods had not deigned for us to have a dedicated Memoir section, her latest, and all other memoirs, were kept in Poetry. This troubled Don greatly.

“Why is this in Poetry?“
“We keep all memoirs in the Poetry section.“
“But this isn’t a poetry book.“
”…Right.“
He fumed a few moments, looking at the hardback.
“Well that’s stupid.“
“Couldn’t agree more.“
He looked at me, taken aback a tad by my comment, then back to the book, then to me again. “Ok…thanks.”

And that was it. He was a pretty big jerk with me so I didn’t say “You’re welcome,” or anything like that, I just walked away without checking to see if he needed more help.

Hey Don, I didn’t run the company at the time, so I didn’t make the rules up, okay?

Brush With Local Greatness, Vol. 4 : Don Henley is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Steven Burns, [1. You can check out Steve’s website here. It’s rather strange, which probably sums up Burns.] who played, inexplicably, “Steve”, was on the show from 1996 to 2002. When Burns decided to move on (one reason given — male pattern baldness), “Steve” went off to college and his younger brother Joe (played by Donovan Patton) moved in to take care of Blue. Joe was introduced over several episodes where he learned the ropes of playing the signature game, “Blue’s Clues”. The human sidekick would ask Blue a question and rather than answer, Blue would demand that his token human must find 3 clues that would lead to what Blue would have said.

Just once I wanted the human, upon learning that Blue wanted to play the game, to say, “No. I don’t want to play Blue’s Clues today.” Would have been a short show.

So which was a better human henchman, Steve or Joe? Both are likable enough, and my son is glued to either of them when they’re on the screen, but each has a different style, which, after repeated viewing (as I’ve done) becomes apparent.

Patton’s acting is more sitcom-y, I think. He’s a ham when he’s onscreen, kind of like a silent screen actor. He has terrible hair, but that’s only partially his fault, since he was born that way. The other half of it is his fault, because he should get a cooler haircut.

Hard to believe, but Donovan Patton is a cousin of General George S. Patton. [2. It comes from that repository of old people information, Parade magazine, where people frequently bet steak dinners over questions written into the magazine.] I think Patton’s acting is goofy and his character of Joe acts more stupid and clueless than Steve did.

Steve just seemed to be played by a better actor. I actually laugh at him, which isn’t saying much, but he had facial quirks, eyebrow movements, comic timing. Joe seems like his mother drank while she was pregnant with him.

So I award Steve the Ultimate Blue’s Clues Human Sidekick award. Congratulations Mr. Burns. You earned it.

Steve Vs. Joe : The Ultimate Blue’s Clues Human Sidekick Competition is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Will stumbles across the notion that after dating fabulous women for years, that in the end they all want commitment from him, something that he’s not freely willing to give to them. But divorced women with children just want to date, and if they have to dump you, it’s their child, or their ex-husband, or “it’s not you, it’s me”. How could anyone have missed this untapped font of non-commitment?

He begins attending SPAT, Single Parents Alone Together, and meets a young widow who is friends with Fiona, who’s the mother of Marcus, who was also in a film with Kevin Bacon (just kidding). After an outing to the park with a heavy loaf of bread and living through a rather horrendous situation later the same evening, Marcus wants Will to date Fiona so he can “help her be happy again”. Will doesn’t want to help anyone be happy but himself.

Starring:
Hugh Grant, Nicholas Hoult, Rachel Weisz, Toni Collette
Directed By:
Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz
Release Date:
May 17, 2002
MPAA Rating:
PG-13 for brief strong language and some thematic elements.
Distributors:
Universal Pictures Distribution
3.5 Stars

A dance begins between Will and Marcus, with both attempting to make the other a better person. They naturally succeed (this is Hollywood, remember), but not in the cutesy Freddy Prinze Jr. way that it could. Will tries to help Marcus be cool, and Marcus tries to help Will not get trapped in lies. It all, for the most part, works out fairly well.

Hugh Grant bites into the muscles of his character and tears them out by the sinews. I think Grant, who was so sweet and nice in Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, has been waiting for years to play a role that’s likeable, but not that likeable. He’s rude, dull, arrogant and pompous, and Grant bulldozes his squeaky impression. I think he’s employing a little method acting in this film, since deep down inside all men wouldn’t mind the life that Will leads, given the chance.

Nicholas Holt does a pretty good job of standing up to Grant, but unlike the book, his character is a little more recessed than Grant’s. Marcus could whine, but he doesn’t. Bullies pick on him, his mother cries all of the time, he sings “Killing Me Softly” out loud in class by accident, but he attempts to take it in stride, knowing that one day when he gets to University that he’ll be better. I was impressed with his performance, and his character is well rounded compared to other screen teens.

Toni Collette plays Fiona as she was written in the novel; one of the most horrendous vegan hippies that you’ve ever seen with polish and style. This is a far cry from the what could have been cliché poor-but-still-has-her-dignity single mom that she played in The Sixth Sense so well. Short hair, Army surplus clothes, hat knitted in Peru, she oozes hippie. She cares about Marcus more than anything, but depression usually wins out in her battle to care for him. It’s heart wrenching to watch.

Lastly, Rachel Weisz plays the object of Will’s affection and the victim of his lies. I haven’t seen any of The Mummy films, but I saw her in Enemy at the Gates, and she seemed little more than window dressing in that film. Unfortunately, she’s sort of used as window dressing here too. If this were a Bogart film from the 1940’s, she’d be “The Skirt”.

I liked this film a lot and laughed out loud many times when the audience was silent. I felt kind of weird doing that, but it seemed like a private joke remembered fondly between friends who’ve known each other a very long time.

About A Boy is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Processed cheese, according to the FDA, is a “food product” made from regular cheese and sometimes other unfermented dairy ingredients, plus emulsifiers, extra salt, and food colorings. It was developed as a way of staving off the usual perishability that all foods have. Processed cheese has the capability to last almost indefinitely.

Walter Gerber was the first person to invent processed cheese in 1911 in Thun, Switzerland, but James L. Kraft (of Kraft Foods), seeing that the cheese hadn’t been patented, applied for an American patent in 1916. In 1917 he supplied to the US Armed forces the first batch of Kraft canned cheese for soldiers fighting in Europe during World War I. In addition, the Kraft Company also developed a process for producing sliced processed cheese and a machine that individually wrapped slices of cheese. [1. The info for this post came from Kraft’s website and from Wikipedia]

Processed Cheese is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Amateur Film critic GLENN VANCE is sitting in his study on a Saturday morning attempting to figure out what to say about the hilarious and outlandishly bizarre movie, ADAPTATION, he and his wife saw yesterday evening. The difficulty of his task is evident on his face because the film was about so many discombobulated things that it’s hard to describe it without rambling. If he could just find the one word that would bring it all together, make everything clearer to him and the roughly 10 devoted readers of his website, it would be perfect. The one word that when the film is broken down to its basic elements could sum it up.…

2. INT. STUDY. 1 HOUR, 55 MINUTES LATER.

We see a blank computer screen. The cursor blinks like a metronome.

With Adaptation, the new film from the writer/director duo of Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze, this is not easy. At its most basic level it’s about a screenwriter attempting to adapt a book, “The Orchid Thief”, into a screenplay about a man who steals orchids from the swamps of Florida, however it’s also about the author of the book, her relationship with the orchid thief himself, and both of their relationships to the screenplay writer. Throw into the mix a film jumps backward and forward in time and it’s difficult to find the one perfect word that best describes the film, but IRONY is a good place to start.

Starring:
Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, Brian Cox
Directed By:
Spike Jonze
Release Date:
December 6th, 2002
MPAA Rating:
R for language, sexuality, some drug use and violent images.
Distributors:
Sony Pictures Releasing
2.5 Stars

But more about that in a moment.

Spike Jonze, who directed the mind-blowing Being John Malkovich, here jumps feet-first into his sophomore effort like a paratrooper on D-Day morning and expands upon the odd visual world that he created with his previous feature. His favorite accomplice, Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, mines his own fears, faults and self-loathing to create a level of inner paranoia rarely seen since Vertigo. Kaufman’s script is as fertile as the Tennessee valley, which literally covers the entire history of Earth from The Beginning to now and how screenwriter Charlie fits into it. Nicholas Cage plays Charlie Kaufman and Charlie’s (fictitious) twin brother Donald. Charlie has little self confidence and is introverted while Donald is extroverted to a fault and crass. Cage, who lately has slummed in such films as Windtalkers and Gone in Sixty Seconds, finally retreats back to ‘Thespian Nicholas Cage’, the Cage of Leaving Las Vegas, Moonstruck and Raising Arizona. He’s so good here that it’s a true joy to see him actually acting rather than just starring in a film. He is excellent as the fat balding frightened Kaufman and has already garnered a Golden Globe nomination for the role. Hopefully this won’t be a fluke.

The film is fun and interesting and engaging; you actually care about these three little people. You really do care, a rarity in this modern world of disposable celluloid. You care about the book’s author and her sham marriage and you care about Kaufman as he sweats bullets over a possible sophomore slump on his hands. Chris Cooper’s thief has such a passion for plants that you amaze at the fact that he’s only studied them for several years, not his entire life. The laughs in the film come out of the dialogue like machine gun bullets belching from an AK-47, but most of the laughs come from the IRONY of the situations, not cheap one-liners. The casual filmgoer (the lovers of such films as Gone in Sixty Seconds) will probably not realize that most of the third act of the film is played out for laughs rather than pathos and for that one could fault Jonze’s sometimes arrogant direction. Kaufman’s screenplay (the real one, not the film-within-a-film one) tries hard to show that Charlie doesn’t want to fall back on standard clichés like car chases, gun fights, buddy-film clichés and the like but in the end can’t decide how to end the film. Jonze unfortunately doesn’t remind his audience that these conventions are all an in-joke and I ended up laughing at the chase through the Florida swamp with three other people in the theater while the rest sat in rapt attention at the “sadness” that was unfolding on the screen. Jonze is good with the irony here, but he forgets to let the audience in on the joke. Ironic, no?

Adaptation is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Kim’s cousin Karen lived a couple hours south of D.C. in northern Virginia, so in late June we flew up there to visit for a couple of days. We would rent a car and drive into D.C. on the Fourth and toodle around. I thought we was prepared, but nothing prepared us for the heat and humidity.

I used to watch David Letterman and hear him complain that the thermostat got up to 92 degrees that day in New York City and I’d just shake my head. “How can these people not survive 92 freaking degree heat? I’m a Texan! We deal with 192 degree heat every summer!” My father told me that the heat there was different; I scoffed. Texas heat is terrible. I scoffed too soon, I think.

We drove to the Pentagon City mall (right across from the Pentagon, no less) and took the Metro blue line from there. The D.C. Metro is amazing — clean, comfortable and quiet, it’s the complete antithesis to the New York City subway as I would find out a couple years later. Nobody hassling you, people not feigning sleep so people wouldn’t bother them, none of that, only quiet and clean. The Metro is the way all subway trains should be.

We stopped at the Smithsonian stop and climbed out of the underground and got hit by a hot blast of wind. Very hot wind, and it felt like you were swimming there was so much humidity. Instantly our clothes started sticking to us and the backpack we’d brought with us caused my back to ooze sweat. It was not a good sign.

Kim had never been to the Lincoln Memorial so we trekked down past the Washington Monument (which was closed) and walked past the reflecting pool. As we walked past, Tito Puente was playing at a band shell near the Monument, a crowd gathered around. I’d forgotten how big the reflecting pool actually was and it seemed like we walked forever. We finally got there, out of breath and red in the face and saw Lincoln. Took some pictures, went past the Vietnam wall and saw the Korean War memorial and then grabbed a tram to Arlington National Cemetery. Yes, there are Revolutionary War veterans and presidents buried there, but I was there to see the grave of Lee Marvin, who had served in the Marine Corps during World War II. We went and asked at the visitor’s center where he was located and after a little searching found him. He has a very simple white marble headstone, very much unlike his neighbor, professional boxer Joe “The Brown Bomber” Louis, who had volunteered for the Army, even after an amazing career he’d already had. We went to the Tombs of the Unknowns and then headed back to the tram.

We hit the Air and Space Museum at that point and then started to stake out our turf. The Mall was crowded already with thousands of people and it was probably 6 hours before the fireworks would begin. We’d been hot and miserable most of the time we were there, but it was beginning to get to me. I was starting to say things like, “Let’s just go back to the car, I can’t take it anymore,” and other whinyisms, but Kim, the trooper she is, said that we hadn’t come all that way to give up. So we found an office building that had an open lobby and camped out in the air conditioning for several hours. It was heavenly.

When the fireworks started many hours later, we were just east of 14th Street. Right across the street was a huge line of port-a-potties, with a line of people waiting to go them stretching several hundred feet. With the amount of sweating Kim and I had been doing we couldn’t see how anybody would even need to pee in this heat.

The fireworks were amazing, like nothing I’d ever seen before or since. I would think that that much ordnance was not even expelled on D-Day. The sky was full of rockets, light and sound. We were so close to the actual launch site that the booming of each rocket was almost simultaneous with its explosion. It was pretty incredible.

Afterwards, we headed back to the Metro stop, along with about 10,000 people. The heat had been bad, but cram 10,000 people together trying to go down a flight of stairs and you learn a new definition of hideous. It was claustrophobia inducing.

Despite the discomfort, we’d had a great time. Lots of fun. Everyone should go to D.C. for at least one Fourth of July.

July 4, 1999 in Washington, D.C. is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

So I put him in there with me. I was tired, half asleep still and not firing on all cylinders. Peyton, naked, was on the shower floor. Usually in the morning one of the first things that Peyton does is poop. After that I change him and we both go on our merry ways, but like I said, I was tired, half asleep still and not firing on all cylinders.

So after rinsing the shampoo out of my hair I look down at him to make sure he’s fine and not splayed out on his back. And then I saw it — there was poop all over the shower floor. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I probably lost all the color in my face as I went sheet white. There was garbage all over him and he was just about to start playing with it.

I grabbed him and held him up to the water, a cascade of poop raining down onto me.

Couldn’t get worse, could it?

I washed him off and set him down and started to clean myself up. After having been both peed and pooped on I wasn’t too worried about me; skin is waterproof, and nothing was going to get into my bloodstream unless I wanted it to, but still, it’s poop. It’s what your body doesn’t need or want, that’s why you get rid of it.

I looked down again at him. He’d pooped again.

Now I had two watery piles of poop on the shower floor. We’d reached Defcon 1 in my opinion. I called for backup.

Kim came and helped me out. She’d been asleep. I hate waking her up, but I felt that this merited a little teamwork.

We got him cleaned up (no more pooping after that) and then I scrubbed myself down. Later Kim, the saint that she is, Cometed the shower floor. What kind of woman would love you enough to clean up garbage? Like I say, she’s a keeper.

Putting a Baby into the Shower is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Mr. Peppermint was the host of Peppermint Place, a local kids show in Dallas that showed in the area from 1975 to 1995. Mr. Peppermint, wearing his trademark white and red striped blazer, and his sidekick Muffin the Bear entertained me daily when I was a kid. Think of it as a local version of Captain Kangaroo, if you will.

Years ago when I worked at a bookstore (where I met Bizarro creator Dan Piraro) Haynes would drop by and browse the shelves. He was fairly hippie-ish, often with longish hair. Always quiet, he hardly ever spoke to anybody, which I never took as a sign of arrogance but more of shyness. He was just a very unassuming, very tall guy.

He’s also is the father of Gibby Haynes, the lead singer of the Butthole Surfers. I remember at the time that I learned this (from the newspaper, no less!) and they called his group the ‘B Surfers’. Ah…the naive quaint 1980’s. How we miss your censorious ways.

But back to my story.

So as I’m getting the grocerys in the car and getting one of the kids into the car, I see him walking behind the car. Where was he going? To his car, a green Ford Taurus. How un-pepperminty of him.

He gets in, I start heading home, he leaves and I get it into my head to follow him. I thought if he was going in the direction of my house I’d follow along, but if he diverted from my pre-determined course and deviated, I’d break off the chase, resolved to never know where he lived. But when he started driving I saw that he was going the way that I had intended to go in the first place. Very interesting.

So I gunned it and caught up with him. He drove really slow. And strangely, on the wrong side of the street.

But he kept going the same way I would have gone home. And he turned right where I would have turned right, and then he turned left onto a street near mine. Not wanting him to become alarmed, I broke off the chase at this point. But I picked it up again when I realized that the street he was going down existed for only one block, and if he turned there he probably lived on that block.

And he did. Driving down that street slowly, I saw him park the car and get out and go into a house not 3 blocks from mine. Six tenths of a mile. How crazy is that?

Brush With Local Greatness, Vol. 3 : Jerry Haynes is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

She seems to exist in their world to feed them and clean up after them. Rosalba is so naive about life that she doesn’t suspect a thing is wrong with it until she takes a family vacation and while trying to fish her wedding ring out of a rest stop toilet bowl she is left behind by the tour bus and subsequently has an epiphany. (Unrelated side note: Maybe my wife and I are different, but I think we would notice if one of the other was missing from a bus while on vacation together. Ah movies, suspension of disbelief and all that.) Rosalba calls her husband (Antonio Catania) on the bus, and he naturally goes ballistic because she’s thrown the group off schedule by getting left behind. This is when Rosalba discovers that she’s little more than a doormat for her hubby, so she takes off for Venice — which she has never seen — for a personal “vacation”.

Enter the screwiness. Quickly Rosabla meets soft-spoken and elusive waiter Fernando Girasoli (Bruno Ganz) who, after a brief encounter at the restaurant where he works, takes pity on her penniless state (she somehow has no money of her own on her) and lets her stay the night at an extra room in his apartment. Fast forward, Fernando has a sad past that he doesn’t speak of, but Rosalba learns by spying on him. She quickly decides to extend her “vacation” by finding a job with a crazy florist, befriending Girasoli’s kooky (and I don’t use that word lightly) next door neighbor, a holistic masseuse (Marina Massironi) who wears jewels in the middle of her forehead and has plumbing problems, and permanently moving into Girasoli’s place on a strictly platonic basis.

Starring:
Licia Maglietta, Bruno Ganz, Giuseppe Battiston, Marina Massironi, Antonio Catania
Directed By:
Silvio Soldini
Release Date:
July 27, 2001
MPAA Rating:
PG-13 for brief language, some sensuality and drug references.
Distributors:
First Look Pictures
2 Stars

Everything comes to a head when Rosalba’s husband tires of his shirts being wrinkled and steps up his quest to bring her home by hiring a plumber/private detective named Costantino (Giuseppe Battiston) to find her. The man is a comedy of errors. He attempts to get into character with a trench coat and clip-on sunglasses, but he’s still a bumbling plumber. Costantino was my favorite character in this uneven film if only because he rose the level of humor here from average to just a tenth of a point above average. I pulled for him because even though he’s in a city of 60,000 people he knows he can find Rosalba, even if he’s got to look at the other 59,999 people first. He was the high point.

In the end, I have no strong feelings about this film. I’m only puzzled by questions like:

Why did the writers feel compelled to make a man named Fernando Girasoli a native of Iceland? “Hi, I’m Fernando and I’m from Iceland.” No wonder he moved to Italy.

Why did there have to be a scene where we are forced to see the sweaty man-boobs of the overweight plumber/private eye? And why would a decent looking woman like the kooky masseuse think that was hot?

But you shouldn’t try too hard to answers to these questions. Even with the added knowledge you’d still end up feeling neither good nor bad about the film.

Bread and Tulips is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Up to a point. Yes, I tried to see all of his films. Down by Law, Mystery Train, etc. Then came Night on Earth, what with its 5 cabbies driving around the world on one night and what happens to them, and I just plain lost interest. Maybe it was Winona Ryder and her “it girl” status at the time. Maybe I just didn’t care. Pulp Fiction had just come out, cinema was changing and more exciting, and the Europeanesqueness (is that a word?) of Jarmusch’s ethos just kinda bored me at that point in my filmic development.

It only got worse later. I didn’t care about seeing Dead Man, even though it paired the amazing Crispin Glover and verifiable screen legend Robert Mitchum, or Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai or any of those Coffee and Cigarettes films he’s been doing for almost 20 years. I was bored with Jimmy’s work. I didn’t care for his way of doing The Business anymore.

Starring:
Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Tilda Swinton, Julie Delpy, Chloe Sevigny, Jessica Lange
Directed By:
Jim Jarmusch
Release Date:
August 5th, 2005
MPAA Rating:
R for language, some graphic nudity, and brief drug use.
Distributors:
Focus Features
2 Stars

Bill Murray, on the other hand, had and has never followed the auteur path. He started out as an overt comic on “Saturday Night Live”, moved on to Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes and Ghostbusters. Then out of the blue came The Razor’s Edge and it hit people like a brick wall at the time : How could Bill Murray do drama? Is that even possible?

He was slammed for it and quickly got back into comedy. It was sort of downhill for him from there. Ghostbusters II, Quick Change, Larger Than Life, The Man Who Knew Too Little. He interspersed small gems, and some outright classics, in between these festering steaming turds of celluloid — Groundhog Day, Mad Dog and Glory, and the fabulous Ed Wood, but the verdict was in on Murray by 1997, and his career was DOA.

Then out of the blue Wes Anderson wanted Murray for the part of Herman Blume in his little film Rushmore, and the rest is history. Murray’s career since that touchstone has been one of highs (The Royal Tenenbaums, Lost in Translation) and lows (Osmosis Jones, Garfield) but he is now at the point in his acting career that he’s widely respected as an excellent and dependable character actor.

Put the two previously talked about people together, though, and it’s like watching water evaporate off of the sidewalk.

Murray, usually kinetic to a fault, plays Don Johnston, aged womanizer who made a killing in computers and now lives in retirement doing nothing but watch TV and have his ex-girlfriends walk out on him. On the same day that his current flame (Julie Delpy) is leaving him, he receives a letter typed on pink stationary letting him know that he and an unnamed ex-flame had a son 20 years previous and that the boy may be looking for Don. Enter Winston (Jeffrey Wright), Don’s neighbor and an amateur sleuth who takes up the quest to find the letter’s sender with a zealot’s zeal. “You have a son out there. Don’t you want to know who he is?” Don’s initial answer? No. Probably in in his mind it would be Hell No. Undeterred, Winston plunges in, demanding a list of women Don would have known in the Biblical sense roughly 20 years hence. Winston produces an itinerary, driving directions and hotel reservations for Don.

Tired of boredom, or I would hope, out of curiosity, Don takes off to unnamed locales across the US of A searching for his past and, as you can probably guess, something about himself that shows him that he matters in this world. Along the way he gets to see what happened to these women that he knew intimately and how they turned out, and possibly what might happened to himself in a parallel universe. They range from bizarre (Jessica Lange) to funny (Sharon Stone) to pathetic (Tilda Swinton). History comes back to bite Don again and again, but he continues on his quest for reasons, through Jarmuschian logic, that are his alone.

Really, Broken Flowers is not a bad movie, it just isn’t fulfilling. I understand the Jarmuschian logic that the outcome means less than the journey (Movie Trailer Guy Voice — “One Man…Alone…A Quest…of Parenthood.…”), but after investing 2 hours of your life, and a hard-earned $16, you might be wanting a little more than is given to you. I won’t give away the end of the film, since I hate people who do that, but yes, you will probably be disappointed unless you’re one of those people that likes to go to a late night coffee shop in the Beatnik part of town after seeing your film and be snarky about what you’ve just witnessed ad nauseaum until late into the night. Bill Murray is really good in his minimalist way here, and I don’t fault him at all for my belief that the film fails. It’s just that I should have looked back to what interested that 21-year-old boy at Baylor and see if that was applicable to my current situation. Maturity should guide us in our choices, so here is a message to you, Glenn Vance, “What would Don Johnston have done here? Would he have gone along with Winston to see a Bergmanesque film about a man searching for his son? Don’s initial answer? No. Probably in his mind it would be Hell No.

Broken Flowers is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Pickersgill had learned flag making from her mother, Rebecca Young, who made ensigns [2. An ensign is a distinguishing flag of a ship or a military unit, or a distinguishing token, emblem, or badge, such as a symbol of office.] and continental standards during and after American Revolution. After marrying and moving to Philadelphia, Mary returned to Baltimore, widowed and with a small child. She established a flag-making business out of her home. Through her trade she supported her family by designing, sewing, and selling “silk standards, cavalry and division colours of every description.” She created signal and house flags for the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and merchant ships that visited Baltimore’s harbor.

When asked by Major Armistead to sew the flag, she created in just 6 weeks an American flag measuring 30x42 feet with the help of her daughter, two nieces, and two servants. Each stripe was two feet wide and each star was two feet from tip to tip. As a result the flag could be seen from several miles away from the fort.

When the British attacked Baltimore, Francis Scott Key, a lawyer aboard the British ship HMS Tonnant, saw Pickersgill’s flag while he was held captive and was inspired to compose the poem that became the national anthem of the United States. Pickersgill’s flag, being restored, is the centerpiece of the redesigned National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution. [3. The material for this piece came from the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame and Wikipedia.]

Mary Young Pickersgill is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

What hath Hasbro wrought?

What you’re looking at there is a Star Wars Transformer, the latest in a loooooooong line of Kenner/Hasbro toys that attempt to capitalize off of the (fast fleeting) memory of Star Wars in the minds of today’s children. How can you sex up a line of toys spawned by a 30 year old film for Generation Wii? Try synergy.

Michael Bay, the rich man’s Uwe Boll, is helming a big screen live action star spangled version of the Transformers that will be hitting millions of theaters near you in the coming weeks. Will kids want Transformers toys after seeing this film by the man that gave us Pearl Harbor? It’s hard to say, but I think Hasbro has seen the writing on the walls and know that their 30 year old mainstay is not aging well.

One only has to look at the current Star Wars site that Hasbro maintains to see how little they have left in their arsenal. First off, kill the music, Hasbro, because you couldn’t have made it much louder. Once you get past the ear-splitting theme music and into the section that includes the toys by category the boredom begins. What is Darth Vader doing riding a motorcycle? It’s pathetic and silly. From the site –

As outlaws, rebels and renegades take to the road in a galaxy far, far away, the Star Wars CUSTOMS shop designs and builds awesome choppers with expert precision. These choppers are built to the exact specifications of their owners, each with a few special modifications.

You want speed? You got it. Horsepower? Ditto. Attitude? Plenty to spare.

So hop on and hold tight as this custom chopper cruises all over the galaxy!

Rev it up and let it go for smooth riding action! Detailed chopper comes with lightsaber.

I guess “If you like American Chopper, you’ll love Star Wars CUSTOMS!”

Next up is ATTACKTIX, which I think are some sort of nerd-pleasing role playing game pieces that can actually shoot/fight/etc.. The problem is that some of the pieces have weapons the size of the character carrying said weapon. And the picture on the main page of Chewbacca with a huge wavy hand is not comforting.

Last up is the FORCE BATTLERS, large, cartoony figures that barely resemble the characters you love (Chewbacca) or ones you couldn’t care less about (General Grievous, Jango Fett, Emperor Palpatine). Each comes with weapons that were probably never used by the character (Chewbacca has a freaking shield!) or silly weapons (Palpatine comes with, get this, balls of energy).

Granted, Star Wars figures were always the hallmark of the toy line, and Hasbro has come a long way in updating the figures we 6 and 7 year olds horded on the playground, but how many times should I buy an R2-D2 figure? Thee or four times? Sure, the latest one looks like the real deal and is very detailed, compared to that clunky clicky one that I had as a kid.

But then it comes down to economics. Does Hasbro need my money? Star Wars figures aren’t like buying consumables like milk and bread; you hang onto them and put them away in airtight baggies, praying for that day that someone will pay you 100X what it was worth when you bought it.

Hasbro, let Star Wars die. You’ve kicked your dead Tauntaun enough. Let it go.

The Sad, Sorry State of Star Wars Toys is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

My wife, the ballsy one, asked the dad if his brother was in the Old 97’s.

“I don’t have a brother,” he said, sort of standoffishly. “And I’m in the Old 97’s.”

So that was it. The pictures were of Ken and his wife, but before the graying hair. Case solved!

He was genial enough. While we both chomped pizza and cake we talked about “Heroes” and a group watching party that a local comic book shop puts on at the Magnolia every Monday night. He talked about a Chili’s ad that they had done (a lot of money for one day’s work) and were happy with and how they were going to tour the following week. Maybe it’s just the way he talks, but he kind of had that “bask in my glow” way of speaking, and some of the other dads who were there were giving him those puppy dog eyes, which I thought was kinda gay, but, thinking about it, Ken has attained a dream that all men at some point in their lives dream — he plays guitar in a band that tours and puts out albums that you can buy on Amazon. And the band is marginally famous.

I wasn’t going to tell Ken that I had all of their albums up until Fight Songs (which bordered on being too poppy for my tastes) and sing their songs loudly as I drive because I didn’t want to be one of those people that slobbers all over celebrities. He’s not flashy like lead singer Rhett Miller, who I remember from high school when he went to ESD and dated a girl in my class. It looks like Ken leads a pretty simple life, with his wife and 2 kids. We just chatted and it was alright. Pretty nice guy.

It ended kind of weird though. I have one other tangential link to Ken — he dated a friend of mine’s wife. Not when they were married, of course, but before all of the matrimony stuff. When he found out that we knew him through our friend, he started telling a story to us about when he dated her. Ken said it was difficult going out with her, since he had the band and would be back in Dallas for a week before heading out on the road again for another month or so and he didn’t really know if he should call her his girlfriend or not. It all ended badly and he felt more than a little responsible for the whole mess, which, according to our friend, he did create. He said to say hi to her when we saw her.

When you know these people as people the high sheen of what they do seems to come off a little bit and you realize that the people that Entertainment Tonight and gossip rags hold up as famous are just people who want to have lives also, and they screw up relationships and stuff like that too.

But he does play a pretty mean guitar. And I like the pillow that says “Buenos Dias” on it in their house. Where can I get one of those?

Brush With Local Greatness, Vol. 2 : Ken Bethea of the Old 97’s is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Some legacy, huh?

Screen writer Milton Gunzburg and his brother Julian thought they had a solution for the declining attendance with their Natural Vision 3-D [1. Natural Vision 3-D is shot with a special camera rig comprised of two cameras, producing a “left eye view” and a “right eye view.” The two resulting film strips are put together to form one film strip.] film process. They tried to shop it around Hollywood, but no one really had any interest. Columbia and Paramount passed on Gunzberg’s pitch. 20th Century Fox introducing CinemaScope and weren’t interested in throwing another viewing experience into the mix . Only one man, John Arnold, who headed the MGM camera department, liked it enough to convince his bosses to purchase an option on the technology, but they let their option lapse.

To the Gunzbergs, it appeared that the Natural Vision technique of filming was doomed and they were back to square one until a man named Arch Oboler wanted a meeting with the them. Oboler, producer and writer of the popular radio show, Lights Out [2. Lights Out was a radio program featuring “tales of the supernatural and the supernormal.” At the time it was immensely popular, and was one of the first horror programs.], was impressed enough to option it for his next film, The Lions of Gulu.

The film was based on a well-known event at the time, the killing of more than 120 workers building the Uganda Railway for the British at the turn of the century. The incident was also the basis for “The Man-eaters of Tsavo”, a story written in 1907 by J.H. Patterson, the hunter who tracked and killed the animals.

Bwana Devil premiered on November 26, 1952 at the Paramount Theatres in Hollywood and Los Angeles, CA. The critics hated it but it was a smash with audiences. Local premieres followed in San Francisco on December 13, Philadelphia, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio openings on December 25 and New York on February 18, 1953.

United Artists bought the rights to Bwana Devil from Oboler for $500,000 and a share of the profits put the film into wide release in March. After other studios saw the big profits that UA was bringing in with Bwana Devil, other studios raced to release their own 3-D films and a cool, albeit short lived, trend was begun. [3. An explanation of the Natural Vision 3-D process came from Dimension 3 and the rest of the information for this piece came from Wikipedia.]

Bwana Devil, the First Color, American 3-D Film is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

As best as I can gather, the Losties have been on The Island for roughly around 70 days, just south of 2 months. In that time they’ve had 9 of their own die (Scott, Boone, Shannon, Arzt, Libby, Ana Lucia, Mr. Eko, Nikki, Paulo) and one more if you count the Oceanic Air pilot killed in the first episode, and some of those people, if the show’s time line is to be believed, died literally only weeks ago. Our castaways don’t seem very visibly upset by a lot of the death going on around them.

I attribute this to the “The ‘Lost’ Short Term Memory Syndrome”. It’s a condition commonly found in television characters who crashed on an island 3 years ago and are still living in that time, yet they’re being watched 3 years in the future on television. How else can you explain the lack of feelings, the forgotten things that happen from one week (or day, or whatever their passage of time consists of) to the next?

We’ll be talking in “Lost” time, not real world time, FYI.

On the second day our Losties are on the island some of them hike to higher ground to see if they can use a radio to contact the outside world, but they pick up signals in French from a radio tower. Shannon is able to decipher them, but many more people were there besides her. Do they not remember this unseen tower? Why aren’t they looking for it?

Sawyer was tortured by Sayid roughly a week and a half after they crashed for hoarding, yet in last night’s episode, Sawyer and Sayid are paling around and trying to get Juliet to talk. Would you be friends with someone who had tortured you not 2 months before? Why isn’t Sawyer trying to get even with Sayid for doing this?

Three weeks ago Jinn, Sawyer, Michael and Walt set sail on their boat, which was blown up by the Other known as Tom later that day. That was 3 weeks ago? Feels like forever ago.

Sayid loved Shannon, and she died about on day 48 of their time on the island. If we’re at about day 65+, shouldn’t Sayid still be a little torn up over her? The guy sure did mourn a long time for his girl, didn’t he?

On day 59, Locke was trapped beneath the blast door in the Hatch. It pierced his thighs, but a week later he’s fine? What gives? I know it’s the “healing powers of the island”, but come on, don’t give me that.

Eight-ish days ago, Michael killed Ana Lucia and Libby. Eight days ago. Three days after that Michael and Walt are given a boat and coordinates by Ben Linus. They leave the island.

On the same day the Hatch explodes. If the Hatch exploded on day 65, and we’re right around day 70 or so, it’s been less than a week since that occurrence. None of the Losties seem to remember the Hatch, but the Others talk about the Purple Light that screwed up their navigation systems.

I guess they forgot about the Numbers too. And they were such a big deal, weren’t they?

I’ll give them a point of consistency though — Sawyer has not reverted to calling people nicknames yet. I expect that to change as he conveniently forgets his deal with Hurley.

The “Lost” Short Term Memory Syndrome is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Dan Piraro was the creator of the Bizarro comic strip, and I knew that the name wasn’t very common, so I carefully asked, “Is this the Dan Piraro we all know and love?” And she answered that yes it was. Dan’s wife called him over and I said how much I liked his comic and he thanked me. They left, but later I put out another staff recommendation of “Best of Bizarro, Volume 1″. The card that I put with the book said, “If Dan Piraro is cool he will sign these.” And he obviously was cool, because he did sign them, all of them. I of course snatched one of the autographed copies up. Still have it, too.

He didn’t look like the picture I’ve included at the time, he looked much more eccentric, with long curly hair and a goatee. The picture next to this makes him almost look Dad-like.

The next time I saw him in our store he was buying a “Do Your Own Divorce in Texas” book. I hope that wasn’t concerning the woman who’d called him over to say hi to me.

UPDATE :

On April 9 of this year I got up the gumption and wrote Dan from the email address given off of his website –

Dan,
About 12 years ago I was working at the Bookstop near the Inwood theater in Dallas and knew that you occasionally came into our store. I had set out a staff recommendation of your Best of Bizarro (the first one) and my card underneath it read “If Dan Piraro is cool he will sign these.”

Suffice to say, you were very cool and signed all of them. I still have one, even though my wife wonders why I keep it around.

Just wanted to say thanks for that.

–
– Glenn Vance

I had no idea if he would write me back…but three days later he did.

Thanks for the note, Glenn. It was awfully nice of you to thank me after so many years. Hope all is well with you and yours and that you are finding life to be grand and groovy. I lived in Dallas then and live in NYC now. You still in Dallas?
Dan

Holy moly. He was engaging me in conversation. So I told him about my wish to get my masters and PhD in History and then teach. I thanked him for writing me back and told him to have a good one.

And he wrote back again!

Good luck with your professorship. Sounds like a good career and one that hardly ever includes being paged in the middle of the night. As long as you stay away from the co-eds. : )
d

How freaking cool is that?

Brush With Local Greatness, Vol. 1 : Dan Piraro is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

McCall was chairman of the New York ad agency McCaffrey & McCall, and he put the problem to his underlings. They suggested he hire Bob Dorough, a Texas jazz musician known for creating catchy music to create the songs. Dorough was willing to give the idea a shot, and he plowed through his daughter’s math books, making up tunes on his piano until he’d created the trippy ballad “Three Is a Magic Number.”

McCall loved Dorough’s song, and the tune was eventually released as a record by Capitol Records under the title Multiplication Rock. A workbook deal fell through, but Tom Yohe, McCaffrey & McCall’s creative director, thought that the songs would go well with animation, so, after doodling some pictures, which McCall once again loved, they put together a 3 minute film to accompany “Three Is a Magic Number”, which they showed to ABC’s head of children’s programming, Michael Eisner. Eisner was receptive to the idea and gave McCaffrey & McCall the go ahead to create films for the rest of the multiplication tables. General Mills was brought on as the sole sponsor of Schoolhouse Rock.

Eisner also demanded that the big animation studios of Hollywood that made their Saturday morning cartoons cut 3 minutes from each show so that the animated shorts could be run. The studios were not too eager to comply, but after prodding by Eisner that it made good business sense, the relented.

Schoolhouse Rock premiered on the weekend of January 6–7, 1973, with the play list being “My Hero Zero,” “Elementary, My Dear,” “Three Is a Magic Number” and “The Four-Legged Zoo.” The shorts were aired for 12 years, ending in 1985. [1. The information for this piece came from the omnipresent Wikipedia and the totally great School House Rock Site.]

Schoolhouse Rock is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Make me care again.

You bastards!

The people behind “Lost” must have noticed that our household was getting tired of their little televised social experiment, because out of the blue they’ve started putting on far better shows than we were used to seeing on ABC on Wednesday nights. Except for a few glitches this season (like the horr-i-ble Jack-centric “Stranger in a Strange Land”) the second half of season 3 hasn’t been too shabby, with episodes like the Desmond-centric episode “Flashes Before Your Eyes” being the stand out for me this season, followed by “The Man from Tallahassee” and last week’s fun (for me, at least) “Expose” where they killed off the latest clumsily introduced members of the Losties.

The producers definitely were yanking our chains when the season started, what with the downbeat episodes of Jack, Sawyer and Kate’s captivity and Jack’s growing relationships with Ben and Juliet. I love Ben now, he’s just so creepy/weird and you really (up until “Expose”) didn’t know where he was coming from, but he’s either manipulating people to do what they wouldn’t normally do and he’s a mastermind of sorts, or he’s delusional and thinks he’s some amazing puppet master. And Juliet has evil written all over her. Just a feeling I get.

John Locke has been infuriating this season though. You can’t stop playing with computers, can you John? First Mikhail escapes because you want to play chess on the Fire Station’s computer, then you blow up the Fire Station out of stupidity, and then you kill Mikhail because he knows you were a paraplegic, and to top it all off you go and take that C4 that you found and blow up the one reliable mode of transportation off of the island? What’s your angle, John? You better pray that Penny Widmore rescues your ass, or at least your compatriots, since you’ll never want to leave the island now that you can walk.

Charlie can die anytime he wants now. After the drug storyline was done with he started feeling extraneous, like Shannon. Hey Desmond, don’t tell Charlie when he’s going to die so he won’t know you didn’t save him, okay?

Where did Rose and Bernhard go? I liked both of them and they’ve just disappeared, but of course, in “Lost” time, they’ve been gone for probably 5 days.

I keep hoping we’ll see Michael and Walt again someday. I like to think that the coordinates that Ben gave Michael when he left at the end of last season took him straight to the second island and that they’re both there. They’re probably locked up somewhere, but I wish they’d explained Walt’s weird gift with animals and drawing them to him. Guess that’ll go straight into the toilet, won’t it? Along with so many other mysteries.

And I don’t miss Eko. He had the ability to become cool, like Locke, but he used all of his street cred up with me. RIP, Eko.

Why is “Lost” trying to win me back? is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

This is more just rambling, isn’t it?

The infected basestar episodes (“Torn”, “A Measure of Salvation”)were excellent in execution but made me furious when a potentially huge new plot line was discarded just because Helo had a conscience. Adama should have shot him himself. Or else Tigh could have eaten him, which I think he would have gladly done.

Tigh continues to be my favorite character of the series, and when he isn’t on screen for long periods of time I miss him. He’s a complete jerk and a drunk, but it’s priceless lines like “It’s in the frakkin’ ship!” and that little laugh he gave Helo in “The Woman King” that make me wish someone would recognize how great an actor Michael Hogan really is. But he’s Canadian and a recluse, from what it sounds like, so he may never get the recognition that I think he deserves.

Next favorite is Chief, Galen Tyrol. Everytime they want to have a heavy mythos-centric episode they seem to allow him to shine. Whether he’s coming to grips with the idea that he may be a Cylon, or trying to decipher the Eye of Jupiter, or even in Crossroads, where he and others, for some reason, keep hearing “All Along the Watchtower”, Aaron Douglas as Tyrol is great, and he plays the tortured part well.

Is it okay to think that Grace Park (Sharon/Boomer/Athena) isn’t that great an actress? Yes, it is okay. Because she’s not.

And I miss Brother Cavill (Dean Stockwell). We need more of him next season. He’s just so slimy.

The Best Show on Television Ends Its 3rd Season is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Or so says some outfit out of England called Oxford Ancestors. They’re a firm that is pioneering a burgeoning field called “bioarchaeology”. It all sounds very suspect, especially given what Oxford University geneticist Bryan Sykes, the founder of Oxford Ancestors says.

Oxford Ancestors, founded in 2001, offers DNA testing to people who want to test their genetic lineage.

Sykes believes that humanity’s common ancestry can be traced through DNA. In 1994, he linked a woman in Britain and a frozen 5,000-year-old corpse found in the Tyrolean Alps, all through their common DNA.

From the AP -

Sykes’ 2001 book “The Seven Daughters of Eve” claimed that 95 percent of Europeans are descended from seven tribal matriarchs — he dubbed them Ursula, Xenia, Helena, Velda, Tara, Katrine and Jasmine — who lived between 10,000 and 45,000 years ago. He also believes most Europeans can trace their descent to “Five Sons of Adam,” and offers tests to identify these paternal ancestral clans by mapping patterns of DNA within the Y chromosome, the genetic material handed down from fathers to sons that changes little over generations.

Published in an article in the American Journal of Human Genetics in 2003, research suggested that 16 to 17 million men, most in Central Asia, shared a form of the Y chromosome that indicates a common ancestor.

Sykes says that the obvious candidate for this is Genghis Khan, who conquered almost all of Asia and fathered many children in the process. Of course, there isn’t any actual tissue from the Mongol ruler — whose tomb has never been found — the tests are based on an assessment of probabilities.

“This is circumstantial evidence but it is very good evidence,” said Sykes. “I think it does mean that people who carry this chromosome are direct patrilineal descendants of Genghis Khan.” How this chromosome came to be so prominent was that when he conquered new territory Genghis Khan would kill the men and routinely inseminate all the women.”

Now, this totally sounds like BS. But what I found funnier than the explanation about how this man was related to Khan was his response in finding out he was related to the conqueror. Again, from the AP -

“My first impression was, ‘Oh no, who is it?’ imagining it was Adolf Hitler or something like that,” said Robinson, 48. “So I was actually pleasantly surprised.”

Now, I know Adolph Hitler was responsible for the deaths of millions, but Khan wasn’t much better. He took over the Asiatic continent, and, according to Jack Weatherford, author of “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World“, the death toll estimate caused by Khan was roughly 15 million people over 5 years of conquest.

Bioarchaeology is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

When it came to desserts, though, he insisted that they be expressive. It may be apocryphal, but it is said that he once demanded of a waiter, “Take away this pudding, it has no theme.” There is no record of how the waiter took the “compliment”.

When it came to drinking, though, he was very particular. He was personal friends with Sir Alexander Walker, and loved his scotch, Johnny Walker Red. When he drank brandy, he always took a snifter of Hine. [3. The info for this post came from the highly informative winstonchurchill.org.]

Churchill’s Tastes in Food and Drink is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Jennifer and Alan play Sally and Joe, a Hollywood power couple who have been having marital problems for their entire marriage. To commemorate the fifth anniversary of their nuptials they have decided to have an anniversary party rather than spend the day alone with each other (which might have made a better film), and the film encompasses this one day.

And what a day it is! What an overblown, bloated, fat, stinking, pretentious day! The main thing that the film wants you, the viewer, to realize from that one day is that these are just plain ol’ ordinary people just like you and me with problems and arguments and philandering and drug use and lost dogs, too. Sally and Joe’s really great group of friends allow all of this to go on and they even join in, just to show Sally and Joe that their lifestyle is regular and average. It makes these people look pathetic.

Starring:
Alan Cumming, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gwyneth Paltrow, John C. Reilly, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Cates
Directed By:
Jennifer Jason Leigh & Alan Cumming
Release Date:
June 8, 2001
MPAA Rating:
R for language, drug use and nudity.
Distributors:
Fine Line Features
1 Star

Standouts in the group: Kevin Kline as an arrogant leading man trying to break his stereotypical mold and John C. Reilly as his director, who’s life is a train wreck waiting to happen. Reilly’s scene after almost drowning in Sally and Joe’s pool tore me up and was the high point of the film, even if it was a low point for him. One of the few times I smiled during this film was when Kline danced an impromptu ballet with his real life daughter. Seeing such a small simple thing in this two hour piece of tripe was light-hearted and wonderful.

Pans: Can I blame anyone besides the two people that started this whole thing? I think not. Where’s my hammer? Let the bashing begin.

Is there anyone more annoying than Alan Cummings? Jesus! He was annoying in Circle of Friends, he was annoying with his fake Russian accent in Goldeneye and I’m sure untold more films that I haven’t wanted to see. The only time I’ve really liked him was in Spy Kids where he played the naïve children’s television host Fegan Floop. But then again, he did have a director that wasn’t himself. He plays a man who is little more than an eight year old boy with the mental clarity of an four year old. He likes to be bad and he hates it when he gets caught. Well, Alan, we caught you again, in a case of BAD ACTING!

Jennifer Jason Leigh can do spaced-out, and she can do introspective loner, but a self-centered diva she can’t very well do. Her whining and complaining put me over the edge and made me wonder why Sally loved Joe or if she loved the idea of loving Joe? She should have left his ass ages ago, instead of sticking around for five years so we could have the story of their anniversary party.

If a time machine actually existed, I would have traveled back to stop myself from renting this. Please take my advice and get something else.

The Anniversary Party is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

While cruising westerly over the Gulf of Mexico Richardson’s B-47 refueled as was standard practice on these missions. Upon reaching New Orleans, Richardson turned northerly and proceeded to the Canadian border in preparation for a southerly turn to begin his “bomb run” on radar scoring facility at Radford, Virginia. Richardson’s B-47 “bombed” the target electronically and headed for home. The crew had covered 4000 miles in 8 hours and were ready to rest and relax. Richardson was told by a message from headquarters that on the return trip he would not be “attacked” by enemy fighters, which added a little bit of comfort to the remaining flight.

But no one seemed to have told Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina. Lt. Clarence Stewart and two other pilots and three crew chiefs are readying their F-86 fighters to “attack” Richardson’s returning B-47. They had been given permission to attack Richardson’s plane any time before it landed in Florida.

At 12:09 a.m. on February 5, Air Defense Control radar picked up one of the B-47’s roughly 180 miles north of Charleston Air Force Base, but it did not pick up Richardson’s B-47. Ground control radar directed the 3 F-86’s to a point several thousand feet over and 15 miles away from Richardson’s B-47. Stewart, and his radar, locked onto the known B-47 and he began descending rapidly to “attack” the bomber, never knowing that he was on a collision course with Richardson’s B-47. Stewart didn’t know he was plunging towards Richardson’s B-47, as he was intently looking at his radar for fear of losing the other B-47 in the darkness, but he looked up for a second and saw the moon reflecting off the top of Richardson’s B-47. He attempted to roll the F-86 right but was unable to avoid a collision.

Stewart was able to eject from the crippled F-86, but, amazingly, the B-47 was only damaged. Upon inspection, the B-47’s crew noticed that the far right engine was bent upwards at a 30-degree angle and the right external fuel tank had been sheared off. Because of the bent engine the plane is rolling wildly. In an effort to control the craft Richardson cuts the power to that engine and then cuts the speed of the plane in an attempt to make an emergency landing at Hunter Air Force Base in Georgia. The tower at Hunter advises Richardson that because of maintenance on the runway, if the plane lands short it could cause the plane to crash, hurtling the Mk 15 bomb through the cockpit and down the runway at 200+ mph. Richardson radios Strategic Air Command and informs them that he is going to ditch the bomb in the Atlantic near Tybee Island, off the coast of Georgia. He does this and is able to eventually land the damaged plane.

On February 6, 1958, the Air Force 2700th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Squadron and 100 Navy personnel began the arduous search to recover the lost Mk 15 bomb. 10 days later an announcement was made that the search had turned up nothing, with the Air Force and Navy believing that the bomb was buried below the water in upwards of 5–15 feet of mud. To this day it has never been recovered. [1. Most, if not all, of the information for this post came from an amazing Washington Post article, “Lost: One H-Bomb. Call Owner”.]

The Tybee Bomb is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

She produced 24 quarts of milk during the flight, which was sealed into paper cartons and parachuted to spectators below. Charles Lindbergh reportedly received a glass of Ollie’s milk.

Elm Farm Ollie is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

And yeah, you know some of these men, but what about the other men? Here they are, the members of the Second Continental Congress — [2. The list of these men can be found pretty much anywhere on the Internet, but my list came from ushistory.org.]

From New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, on Delaware
George Read
Caesar Rodney
Thomas McKean

From the Province of Pennsylvania
George Clymer
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Morris
John Morton
Benjamin Rush
George Ross
James Smith
James Wilson
George Taylor

From the Province of Massachusetts Bay
John Adams
Samuel Adams
John Hancock
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

From the Province of New Hampshire
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Matthew Thornton

From the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery

From the Province of New York
Lewis Morris
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
William Floyd

From the Province of Georgia
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

From the Colony and Dominion of Virginia
Richard Henry Lee
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Jefferson
George Wythe
Thomas Nelson, Jr.

From the Province of North Carolina
William Hooper
John Penn
Joseph Hewes

From the Province of South Carolina
Edward Rutledge
Arthur Middleton
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Thomas Heyward, Jr.

From the Province of New Jersey
Abraham Clark
John Hart
Francis Hopkinson
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon

From the Connecticut Colony
Samuel Huntington
Roger Sherman
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
From Maryland
Charles Carroll
Samuel Chase
Thomas Stone
William Paca

Members of the Second Continental Congress is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Against the backdrop of this knowledge, Germans were fleeing the advancing Soviet army as fast as they could. The Wilhelm Gustloff was there in Gdynia to help with the evacuation as part of Operation Hannibal. [3. Operation Hannibal was a German military operation involving the withdrawal of German troops and civilians from East Prussia in mid-January 1945 as the invading Soviet Army advanced. It became the most successful wartime evacuation in history, responsible for transporting 2 million Germans safely to the West.] Commanded by Friedrich Petersen, the Wilhelm Gustloff began taking refugees aboard on January 28, 1945, with a launch time 48 hours from then. After launch they were to head to Kiel. [4. A city in northern Germany on the Baltic Sea.]

Armed guards allowed passengers on in an orderly fashion, even though panic had taken over the harbor. The mob mainly consisted of women, children and old men, as the SS was combing the crowd for men to fight the advancing Red Army. As the 30th approaches the throng became more panicked, mothers and children became separated, shoving caused some to fall overboard into the icy waters below, hysteria was setting in as the last remaining avenues of escape dried up.

At around 12:30 pm, the Wilhelm Gustloff weighed anchor and left Gdynia with their escort, a small torpedo boat, the Löwe. The sailing was anything but smooth. Rough seas, snow and hail pelted the ship, while on the bridge the crew debated the best course of action to take. Route, optimal speed and whether the Gustloff should be following a zigzag course to avoid detection were all topics of discussion. Shortly after 6 pm the crew was alerted that convoy of minesweepers was approaching them from the opposite direction. In order to avoid a collision, shouldn’t the ships running lights be turned on? The decision, which would prove fatal, was that they should.

Near 8 pm that night the crew of the Soviet submarine S-13 spotted the lights of the Wilhelm Gustloff. Captain Alexander Marinesko gathered his officers together and formulated their plan off attack on the huge ship. Because of ice, the Löwe’s anti-submarine sonar was disabled, forcing lookouts on both ships to rely on sight to spot submarines, which allowed the S-13 to get in close to both ships. Shortly after 9 pm Captain Marinesko orders 4 torpedoes to be launched at the Wilhelm Gustloff (only 3 worked properly), each hitting the starboard side of the cruise ship. Passengers were caught off guard, as most believed that the worst of their journey had passed.

The 3 torpedoes had hit the front of the ship, midship where the swimming pool was, and the rear of the boat near the engine room, knocking out all power on board the ship. Because of this the radio room operator had to use an emergency transmitter to transmit the SOS distress signal. Complete chaos ensued as the ship descended into anarchy. An hour and 10 minutes after the first torpedo hit at 9:16 pm, the Wilhelm Gustloff slipped beneath the waves of the Baltic, taking thousands of people with it. Some survivors flailed in the icy water attempting to climb into life boats, only to be beaten back by those occupying them.

The Löwe was able to pick up 472 passengers from the water, while another torpedo boat, the T-36, was able to pick up 564. The minesweepers which were feared to cause a collision arrived and picked up an additional 179 people from the water, eventually bringing the combined total of rescued to approximately 1,230. All in all, 9,500 people would perish in the sinking, making the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff the worst maritime disaster in history. [5. Most of the information for this piece came from the amazingly thorough website wilhelmgustloff.com.]

The Wilhelm Gustloff is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

George moved the family to Waxahachie for work reasons, but he left the family there and moved back to Oklahoma, once again in a quest to find better work. The interesting thing about this is that Susan and the children did not go with him. The family continued to pick cotton to feed themselves.

During all of this Bessie believed that she was destined for greater things than living out a meager existence. Trying to get out of the situation she was in, she saved all the money she could and attended a year at the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, Oklahoma. The problem was that her money ran out after that amount of time and she had to go leave school. She returned home.

At the age of 23 she moved to Chicago and lived with some of her brothers who were living there at the time. She worked at a supermarket and as a manicurist, but she dreamed of flying. Orville and Wilbur Wright had flown their Wright Flyer in 1903, and Bessie wanted to do the same. She heard stories from men returning from The Great War about flying over the battlefields of France and they fascinated her.

With some financial backing, she took classes in French and then in 1920 traveled to Paris to attend the Federation Aeronautique Internationale. She’d had to travel that far to learn to fly, because American flight schools would not allow blacks to enroll. By 1921, after training, she was the only black pilot in the world.

She became a role model, not just for black women, but people of all races, for she had overcome great obstacles and fulfilled her dreams. Sadly, her dream came to an end on April 30, 1926 in Jacksonville, Florida when she crashed in the first plane she had ever owned.

She and her mechanic had taken the new plane out for a test flight. During the flight the mechanic, who was piloting the plane, experienced engine trouble and lost control of the aircraft. Bessie fell out of the open cockpit of the plane and plummeted several hundred feet to her death.

More than 5,000 people attended her memorial services in Chicago and another 10,000 filed past her coffin to pay their last respects. She garnered much attention even in death, but she will always be the first black woman pilot. [1. Information for this piece came from Texas Escapes and BessieColeman.com.]

Bessie Coleman is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

The idea of a meeting such as this was floated a year earlier by Renaissance man Benjamin Franklin, but it took the closing of Boston Harbor by the British and the following Boston Tea Party [1. To protest the The Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767, a secret group calling themselves the Sons of Liberty, organized by future Congress member Samuel Adams, quietly boarded 3 ships (The Dartmouth, the Elenor and the Beaver) on December 16, 1773 and threw most of the contents of each ship into the harbor. It totaled around £10,000 worth of merchandise.] to get the ball really rolling. The First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia’s Carpenters Hall on September 5, 1774. Of the 12 colonies, only 12 sent delegates, as Georgia was beset by problems with Indians and needed help from the British military to put down the problems.

So…you know those few men that you had to know for school, but what about the other ones? Here they are from the First Continental Congress -

From the Province of New Hampshire
Nathaniel Folsom

From the Province of Massachusetts Bay
John Adams
Samuel Adams
Thomas Cushing
Robert Treat Paine

From the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
Stephen Hopkins
Samuel Ward

From the Connecticut Colony
Silas Deane
Eliphalet Dyer
Roger Sherman

From the Province of New York
John Alsop
James Duane
John Jay
Philip Livingston
Isaac Low
County of Kings
Simon Boerum
County of Orange
John Haring
Henry Wisner
County of Suffolk
William Floyd

From the Province of New Jersey
Stephen Crane
John De Hart
James Kinsey
William Livingston
Richard Smith

From the Province of Pennsylvania
Edward Biddle
John Dickinson
Joseph Galloway
Charles Humphreys
Thomas Mifflin
John Morton
Samuel Rhoads
George Ross

From New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, on Delaware
Thomas McKean
George Read
Caesar Rodney

From Maryland
Samuel Chase
Robert Goldsborough
Thomas Johnson
William Paca
Matthew Tilghman

From the Colony and Dominion of Virginia
Richard Bland
Benjamin Harrison V
Patrick Henry
Richard Henry Lee
Edmund Pendleton
Peyton Randolph
George Washington

From the Province of North Carolina
Richard Caswell
Joseph Hewes
William Hooper

From the Province of South Carolina
Christopher Gadsden
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Henry Middleton
Edward Rutledge
John Rutledge

Possibly next — the members of the Second Continental Congress. [2. The list of these men can pretty much be found anywhere, but for little tidbits about this piece I got a few facts from U-S-History.com.]

Members of the First Continental Congress is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

It followed the lives of the Molly and Jake Goldberg and their family as they made their way through their everyday lives in Brookylyn, NY. Gertrude Berg, the writer-producer behind the show, portrayed Molly and Philip Loeb portrayed her husband Jake. Also on the show were Roslyn Silber and Alfred Ryder Molly and Jake’s children Rosalie and Sammy.

During the first season on CBS, the show was the third most popular program on the air. It was such a popular show that performers from other fields desired to be on the show, like Jan Peerce of the Metropolitan Opera.

It went on to be the 3rd highest rated show for CBS during that time. It eventually went from CBS to NBC to a now none-existent network known as the Dumont network where it ended its run in 1955. [1. Parts of this piece came from information from the Internet Movie Database, Wikipedia and the always entertaining TV Party site.]

The Goldbergs — The First Sitcom is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

Many women have made a run for the presidency. Who were they?

Victoria Woodhull, 1872: The first woman to run for president, Woodhull was an Equal Rights Party candidate. Ulysses S. Grant won the 1872 election as a Republican.

Belva Ann Lockwood, 1884 and 1888: Lockwood, who also ran on the Equal Rights Party ticket, eventually became the first woman lawyer to practice before the Supreme Court. In 1884, Democrat Grover Cleveland was elected president; in 1888, Cleveland lost to Republican Benjamin Harrison.

Margaret Chase Smith, 1964: Smith, a Maine Republican, was the first woman to run on a major party ticket, entering primaries in New Hampshire, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas and Oregon, among others. She withdrew after the first round of voting at the Republican National Convention. Sen. Barry Goldwater won the Republican nomination and lost in a landslide to the incumbent, Lyndon B. Johnson.

Shirley Chisholm, 1972: The first black woman to run for president, Chisholm ran as a Democrat and received more than 150 votes at the Democratic National Convention. She was also the first black woman to serve in Congress; New York sent her to the House of Representatives in 1968. George McGovern won the Democratic nomination that year and lost to the incumbent, Richard M. Nixon.

Patsy Mink, 1972: A congresswoman from Hawaii, Mink ran in the Oregon Democratic primary as an anti-war candidate.

Pat Schroeder, 1988: Schroeder’s headline-grabbing campaign never got off the ground after the Democratic congresswoman from Colorado could not raise enough money. The party’s nomination went to Michael Dukakis and the election to Republican George H.W. Bush. Schroeder was first elected to the House in 1972, where she served for 24 years.

Elizabeth Dole, 2000: Dole announced her presidential bid in January 1999 and dropped out of the race nine months later. Republicans eventually nominated George W. Bush, who defeated Democrat Al Gore for the presidency. Dole’s husband, former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., was the Republican presidential nominee in 1996, when he lost to Bill Clinton. Mrs. Dole is now North Carolina’s senior senator, elected in 2002.

And last, but certainly not least–

Carol Moseley Braun, 2004: The first black woman to serve in the Senate, Braun was one of 10 candidates to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in the last presidential election. Primary voters eventually tapped Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., as the nominee. He lost to George W. Bush. [1. This list, naturally, came from that invaluable fount of knowledge, Wikipedia.]

Female Presidential Candidates is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.

The first English casualties to be suffered in an air raid didn’t come from Messerschmitts or any of Hitler’s Vengeance weapons during World War II, but from German blimps, or zeppelins, in 1915.

The tiny town of Great Yarmouth was bombarded by a 3 zeppelins of the German Navy near the beginning of World War I. The zeppelins, designated as L3, L4, and L6, left the northern German coast on the morning of January 19, 1915 for, what was cryptically called “a distant mission to the west”. If it can be believed, these missions were not to include bombing London, as Kaiser Wilhelm had decreed -

“Targets not to be attacked in London but rather docks and military establishments in the Lower Thames and on the English coast.”

The first mission was to encompass bombings in the areas of the Thames estuary, the mouths of the Humber and Tyne, and the East Anglian ports of Harwich, Lowestoft and Yarmouth.

Fregattenkapitan Peter Strasser, the leader of the mission, lifted off from the German coast aboard his zeppelin, the L6, at 9:30 that morning, but his participation in the raid was to be short-lived, as his zeppelin developed engine trouble off the Dutch coast and was forced to return to Germany. Despite the loss of their captain, the remaining 2 zeppelins, commanded by Kapitanleutnant Hans Fritz on L3, and L4, skippered by Kapitanleutnant Magnus von Platen-Hallermund, floated on to England.

Problems began to arise for the remaining 2 zeppelins were blown off course and they made separate landfalls over the coast of Norfolk. Without radio contact between the 2 zeppelins and with the weather being bad, neither knew where the other was. Locals, on the other hand, began reporting sightings of various aircraft to authorities.

Finally, at 8:20 pm, L3 sighted Yarmouth and began its bombing run over the town, traveling from north to south. During the next 10 minutes L3 is thought to have dropped eight bombs, three of which failed to detonate, and two incendiary devices, causing an estimated damage and killing or wounding a handful of innocent bystanders.

Because of the bewilderment of the locals on the ground, the zeppelins encountered almost no resistance, with reports of only one sentry firing on L3 as it flew overhead.

As for the bombing raids, they achieved little in military terms. The damage was almost all done to private property, but psychologically the damage was huge. No longer were the British Isles immune to attack, with their powerful navy. Now the enemy could bypass that obstacle entirely by just flying over it. This attack, while small, was primarily a trial run for larger attacks that would come later on London, which began on May 31 of that same year. Several hundred people were killed in subsequent raids that eventually declined as the British developed incendiary ammunition which helped to bring down the zeppelins and once again regain control of English airspace. [1. Almost all of the information for this piece came from an excellent write-up on Norfolk Roots 24. Other details came from The Worldwide School site.]

England’s First Air Raid Casualties is a post from Glenn Vance’s site.