Goggles

Courtesy of fark.com





I laughed.

Contest

What ... the ... fuck? Are Obama and The Crazy Little Man having a fucking contest to see who can pick the worst running mate. Good luck with the next four years America.


Historical Analysis of the '08 Election.

Review : The Dark Knight

Just saw this in my drafts for this blog. Got as far as putting the picture and links in and then promptly forgot about it. It's been a while since I've seen it at this point. Sure it made a bazillion dollars at the box, sure it's good, but was it that good? I don't think that it was. It was certainly too long. I think Robert Downey Jr said it best when he said.

"didn't get it. ... [I] still can't tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character." He said that while watching the movie, it dawned on him, "I get it. This is so high-brow and so fucking smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie." He then added, "You know what? Fuck DC comics. That's all I have to say and that's where I'm really coming from."

Which is, maybe, a little harsh, but Downey is a Marvel whore now, so what do you expect, but this sequel wasn't any better than Batman Begins. Don't get me wrong. It's a great movie, and you should see it. It's just not all that, as the kids say now-a-days. It's about twenty minutes too long and parts of it feel a little forced, bit it's still pretty good. Good enough to earn


8/10

Review: Wanted

Here's everything you need to know about this movie in three easy steps

1. Physics ... who needs it?

2. Long on action, short on story.

3. Angelina Jolie is ridiculously hot.


Like Tropic Thunder, I'm torn between a three and a four for this movie. I was entertained, certainly, but it could've been so much better. I going to take that as I sign that I should be rating on a scale of ten, instead of five and give Wanted


6/10

Review : Tropic Thunder

Checkout at the hotel in LA was at noon, and our flight was at 8:30 so some of had some time to kill Saturday. There was a theater across the street from the hotel, so Nick, Keith, Simon and I walked over to check out a matinee showing of Tropic Thunder to help wile away the afternoon.

I've seen a lot of movies. I've been in a lot of movie theaters. I've seen movies at Mann's Chinese and the Arclight. I've seen world premieres at the Hollywood Bowl. I've been to drive-ins. I've seen movies on big screens. I've seen movies on small screens. I have never, never, in my life been in a movie theater as awful as the one that we saw this movie in. Simon and I were going to get popcorn until Keith pointed out the, sadly full, glue roach traps just out of sight around a corner in the lobby. I was wearing sandals and I really didn't want to put my feet on the floor while we were watching the movie. The carpet was dirty. The seats were threadbare. Bad screen, bad sound. It was just terrible.

Which is too bad, because Tropic Thunder is really, really funny. It does a pretty good job of taking the piss out of Hollywood in general, an actors in particular. Robert Downey is brilliant as the melanin-challenged Australian, but Tom Cruise is just as good as the studio exec. The two of them are almost good enough to make me forget that I hate Ben Stiller. Worth seeing. I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and round up to


Four Stars.

Quickie Movie Reviews

All the new Qantas flights from Auckland to LAX have on demand movies. In no particular order, I can remember watching ...

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Neil Patrick Harris reprising his role as himself? Classic. Some flat spots, but overall pretty god damn funny. George Bush as lovable pot head. Awesome.

Three Stars

Jason Statham, the most underrated action hero in Hollywood today in a supposedly true story of Royal intrigue and West End thuggery in Early Seventies London. Pretty good. It's no "Snatch", but worth a rental.

Three Stars





Crap. Put me right to sleep. You know you've fucked up when you can make George Clooney look bad. No Country for Old Men might not be the Cohen's worst movie after all. Fuck that, yes it is.

Two Stars

I've read the book that this was based on so I was looking forward to this one. Spacey is excellent. Good Movie

Four Stars








I think that I'm forgetting one but it's all a bit of a blur.

Day [4 .. n]

So classes started on tuesday, 8:30 to 6:00 or so every day, which is hard enough when you're not jetlagged. On top of that, the subject matter is sometimes, shall we say, dry? So going to a party Tuesday night and being up until two or three in the morning was not condusive to being a fully functioning human at 8:00 in the morning. It was my one and only party this year as I am getting far too old for that shit.

Classes went until thursday and I went to a lot of stuff. Saw some presentations for "Wall-E", "Horton", "Kung-Fu Panda", "Pirates III" and "Indiana Jones". Went to a couple really interesting technical presentations on hair scanning and rendering. By Friday my brain was jam packed with new stuff. Spent a couple hours on Thursay walking around the Booths, you can't walk ten feet without seeing someone you know, so it's cool to catch up with people. Frankie and I went down to Imageworks on Friday for a while and I caught up with some of the old timers there.

Going home on Saturday was an adventure. I had so much crap with me that I bought in LA, that I totally got profiled and hassled by customs in Auckland, missed my flight and had to get the next one down to Wellington.

I wish that I could have made it to a Dodgers game, but it's amazing how busy you feel like you need to be when you're there on someone else's dime. Looking forward to next year in New Orleans.

Day 3

Pixar took us out to dinner on Monday, or maybe Weta did, all I know is that I didn't pay. And since we were meeting with the software development guys, and the head of software development at Pixar has a brother who just happens to be a world famous chef, who just happens to have an Italian restaraunt in Los Angeles with a two month wait for a table, well, we got treated pretty well, I guess. All fourteen of us. We got to sit in the private room in the back. I wouldn't say that Italian is my favorite food, but this was a very good meal. I even drank some red wine, and it wansn't awful. For me that's saying something, since I usually can't stand the stuff.

President of Walt Disney Feature Animation and founding member of Pixar Ed Catmull gave the keynote speech for Siggraph. He was awesome. He talked about "ideas" vs. "people". In short, you can give a great idea to a mediocre team, and they'll just fuck it up, but if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they'll either make it work, or throw it away and come up with somehting better.

Day 2

I don't travel well across multiple time zones. Very jet lagged. Got up late, 10:45 local time, 5:45 biological time.   Went to Chano's for lunch. OMG best burrito in LA.  Dan L and I walked down to the LA Museum of Contemporary Art. Stopped and checked out the Architecture of the Disney Concert Hall by Frank Gehry up close.  Both very cool.  Work took us out to eat at a fancy, of course, Mexican place.  Stayed up too late at the fourth annual Siggraph poker came.  Won a couple bucks.

Quickie Day 1

Left Wellington at 11:15. Five hour layover in Auckland. Seat next to very large, not fat, just a very large person. Squeezed into seat. Kid kicking back of seat. Insane mom. At various points in the flight she told her daughter that "we don't use toothpaste, it's poison" and "no it's not butter, it's margarine, you can't eat that, it's made of plastic" and something about her "third eye" and "astral travel". Left my favorite brown hat on the plane. Picked up rental car with Guy, went to In-and-Out. Discovered that I had lost all my travel documentation and my per diem, ouch. Went to hotel and checked in. Showered. Actually took mass transit in LA to Hollywood from downtown. Still had to take a $10 cab ride from a totally insane Armenian taxi driver from the subway stop to The Guitar Center. Mrs. bought me a brand new JS1000 for my birthday/father's day. Very first brand new guitar. Very excited. $30 cab ride back to hotel. Haven't really slept in much in 48 hours. LA is a shitty place to not have a car.

Talk

When it comes to the police, in my opinion there's only one thing you need to remember, despite the "protect and serve" claim on every cruiser in the country, the police are not your friends.  They are not there to help you.  Now, I have another rule for dealing with the police.  Keep your fucking yap shut.  If a cop wants to ask you a question, refuse.  We're talking "a nice young policeman came up to me as I was walking down the street seemingly at random and wanted to ask me a question".  No, no, no, no.  Never talk to the police.  Think I'm paranoid?  Well, maybe so, but here's why I'm right about this in two parts ...

one from a lawyer



and one from a cop

Flat

According to the BBC, there's quite a healthy flat-earth subculture on teh intarwebs

Do they really think the earth is flat?

John Davis, a flat earth theorist based in Tennessee, has this to say

"Many use the term 'flat-earther' as a term of abuse, and with connotations that imply blind faith, ignorance or even anti-intellectualism."

I'm going to go with, C) People who think the earth is flat are preaching blind faith, monumentally ignorant and anti-intellectuals of the worst kind and while it's nearly impossible to put into words how much people like that aggravate me, it's a nice segue to an interesting article that talks about how the internet is, instead of spreading truth, enabling this kind of idiot to only receive positive reinforcement of his totally fucked world view and his "pursuit of willful delusion".

My Facts, Your Facts

Holy crap the Greeks knew that the earth wasn't flat. In 400BC they had already figured out how big and how far away the moon and the sun were. Flat earthers are a creation of religious backlash against science in Victorian England. Thank you Christian Apologists, the same knuckleheads that brought you this


Anti-Itellectualisim, it's not just for the dark ages anymore!

Family

We are finally, after seven months, a family again. We picked up the dogs on Saturday. I think it's going to take Zipper about seven more months to calm down. I'm pretty confident they are very happy to be 'home'.