Earworms, M&Ms, and Faces of Death - Part 3 of the what I do Series

This is the third and final installment of the what I do series. In this installment rational thinking has been replaced with talk of pop culture, with an emphasis on movies. I am not sure much can be gained from reading this though you might find out about some pretty mediocre movies.

Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness 
 
Yes, I actually clicked the link for Mondo Films.  I was looking at that yesterday. Not 'earthworms', dude, 'earworms'.  There was a story on Slate about this new commercial for Subway with a repetitive jingle and he called it an earworm. Faces of Death sounds totally bogus for the most part.  I remember watching it as a teenager and thinking it could be real, but some of it was very doubtful.  That's why I want to see it again: I want to apply my adult reasoning abilities to what I am seeing.
 
Amazon has a box set of Faces of Death Vol I-IV
 
Some of the review comments give you and idea of what you’ll be seeing if you watch it.
 
Erik

Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness
 
i am going to have remember to start using the term earthworm for a song stuck in you head.  that was really good link even if the article was not very in depth.  how did you stumble across that one?  I read the wiki page on the faces of death and i am not really sure what to make of it.  they refer to it as a documentary, but it seems like a mocumentary and that it is faked.  i am guessing that they take what they can of real footage and then make there own to fill in the gaps.  there is also link to mondo films which you might find interesting.  they are basically documentaries about sensational topics. They seem like fore runners to todays reality tv.
 
JIM
 
Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness
 
M&M's have a new promotional "Mint Wafer" flavor as their tie-in to the Movie.  Um, yeah, that makes sense. King of Kong?  Or just plain old King Kong?  I liked the scene in King Kong where the dude gets eaten by the giant swamp tube plants.  that's just sick.  We watched Eastern Promises.  That ruled.  I will buy that one eventually. Oh, we went to the movies to see The Ruins.  It was decent, but  it would have been better if I hadn't paid $18 for it.  Pretty gross,  anyway. Some nasty scenes that rival Saw IV. Yes, Alicia had never heard of Faces of Death, so I decided to put it on our list and show it to her.  I was stoked when I saw that it now comes with a real documentary DVD explaining how fake the first one was.  I think the creator himself put it together.  Anyway, read the Wiki link
 
Faces of Death
 
it's a gas.
 
Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness
 
you might want to check out the book for no country i hear is incredibly violent and gives a little better insite of why the movies just ends, which i personally liked, though i would have just ended it when chugar walks away after the car crash.  history of violence is pretty good and if you liked it you should also check out "eastern promises".  I can not believe you are getting the faces of death DVD i have actually been talking about it recently and no one has ever heard of it let alone seen it.  i just want to know if the monkey killing scene is real.  i still think that scene is hardest core scene i have ever seen in a movie and i would be kind of disappointed to find out it was faked.  I have not seen into the wild though i read the outside story that led to the book so i am not sure if i want to see it.  it seems to be getting mixed kind of reviews.  Interesting that you liked jesus camp most things i have seen people have not liked it and actually thought that it was extremely biased.  i still kind of want to see it and king of kong which i hear is great. life aquatic i thought it was a little better than ok, then again it is a wes anderson movie, you might want to check out The Darjeeling Limited the movie is not as good as life aquatic put the short at the begging is really really good.  as for the rest of his movies, Rusmore - great, royal Tannenbaum-great, and bottle rocker-terrible though i know tons of people who love it.
 
JIM
 
Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness
 
We watched No Country for Old Men.  Yeah, I agree that was really good. The end was a little disappointing, just because it was so abrupt. Sheriff Tommy Lee Jones just decided not to go after Crazy Assassin Guy?  I guess.  Good movie, though. We watched A History of Violence last week, forgot to mention that one. Yeah, that was decent.  I won't be buying it or anything, but had some cool depictions of ass-kicking.  the next couple of movies we have on the Netflix queue are Faces of Death (which now comes with a companion DVD explaining which scenes are real and which are fake), Mallrats, Chasing Amy (got to get my Ben Affleck fix), and the Dead Zone.  I've actually seen all of these movies, but I want to get them so Alicia can see them.  The movies on my list that I still have not seen include Talladega Nights, Into the Wild, Reign Over Me, Lost in Translation, Manhunter, Being John Malkovich, Brazil, 9.5 Weeks.  Oh yeah, we watched Jesus Camp a few weeks ago.  That was so unbiased it was amazing.  I'm so used to Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock that I started to forget what a documentary was.  Those people are warping their children's minds.  Finally, I saw The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.  I wish someone would have told me not to drink before I watched it, but no matter.  I think it would have let me down had I been completely sober.  It was a serious underachiever after all of the nice things I had heard about it. It was witty, yes, but not funny.  A shame, really.
 
Erik

Metaphors? Don't talk about Metaphors!...Movies then? - Part 2 of the what I do Series

This is the second part of the what I do series. In this installment the topic of conversation begins to change from that of science and religion to that of movies and other issues of entertainment. And somehow CSI Miami finds its way into this conversation then again so does Motley Crue...


Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness
 
of coarse it is metaphor, but it is does not mean that that there was not a flood of great impact. i do not mean that the whole world flooded.  you take things way to literally.  like personally i think the story Adam and eve could be true at least in this sense.  8 - 10,000 years ago the climate of north Africa was much different than it is today.  it was much more ideal for human life and at some point the climate dramatically changed to what it was today.  Something to do with retreating glaciers in Europe changing the weather patterns, i think. When the climate changed the people living there would have to go some where and the some where was probably the middle east.  given that Semitic languages are related to Africa not indo-europe and secondly why cross the Sahara when you can travel along the coast, would all be likely indicators that they moved east and north.  So, through time this migration becomes the story of Adam and eve and there forced exodus from eden to permanent settlements, just as they begin occurring in the middle east.  i mean they are all metaphors but somewhere along the way they come from truth.
 
I have seen planet terror, it was Ok. you will like zombie story. i liked the other story better, death proof.  the intermission trailers are the best part. forgetting sarah marshall was pretty funny though it kind of dropped of in the second half as the plot kicked in.  the best part is that she stars in this show called crime scene which is satire of CSI Miami, which ironically is already a satire.  The scenes from her show are the best parts by far. i just saw "rear window" for the first time, pretty interesting. saw the sorta remake of it "disturbia" it was surprisingly OK. "Butterfly and the diving bell" French but good, "atonement" slow but the story is really good and i like how it dealt with Dunkirk in it.  You usually do not see much mention of that in movies.  No Country for old Men, incredible and "3:10 to Yuma" is also really good.  Finally saw "high plains drifter" on the big screen probably my favorite movie of all time.  "27 dresses" pretty bad considering i guess the whole plot before watching the movie, but it has one scene that is just great. TV shows I should start watching on DVD.  things on my list are "the wire", "arrested development", maybe "veronica Mars", "northern exposure"... movies i would like to go back and watch are "little big man", "lost highway", "for a few dollars more" ...  
 
JIM
 
Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness  
 
A flood is a metaphor for an angry God cleansing the world of his mistaken first attempt at creating life.  It's like erasing a blackboard after working on a math problem for half an hour and then starting from scratch.  Remember: just because it rained a lot in Mesopotamia or wherever the people who recorded the history lived, doesn't mean that the Earth flooded for real.  The new Rambo looked hilarious.  Limbs being blasted off every other scene?  Cheesy Stallone lines?  What's the memorable moment of violence when the whole movie is just one violent image after another?  A triple decapitation with one swing of a machete?  Starship Troopers was satire, but I loved the effects.  The bugs were so creepy.  Any big horror fan had to love that movie.   Let's see, we watched Lost Highway the other day.  The DVD finally came out (11 years later) and I bought it.  You and I talked about that, right?  You said you saw it or you wanted to see it?  See it if you haven't already.  It's pretty weird.  Reservation Road
 
Reservation_Road
 
(Joaquin Phoenix, Jennifer Connolly).  Decent drama about a couple whose kid gets run over and killed.  Joaquin is stealing all of Sean Penn's roles.  You might find this one slightly dull.   We've been watching a lot of House lately.  Netflix is great for catching up on what I missed.  We just started Season 3.  Season 4 is on TV right now.  The DVD's should be out around Christmas I'm guessing.  I really like House, and I sort of get the feeling you could get into it, too, if you'd just watch a few episodes.  I got the Season 1 box set for Christmas if you want to borrow it.
 
We're getting Planet Terror
 
Planet_Terror
 
tomorrow.  Zombie movies can be fun.  I watched 300 sober the other day-first time for that.  Made a lot more sense!  Good movie. Check out Black Tide
 
blacktide
 
a new band I've been listening to.  They're decent.  Sound like Motley Crue a bit, some Anthrax, Ratt, and a dollop of Metallica.  And they're all teenagers.  That's fun.  The big hit is Shockwave.  It's on Rock Band, that video game.
 
Erik

From Creationism to Starship Troopers - Part 1 of the what I do Series

This is the first part of the what I do series. It is the edited down version of long email discussion i had with a friend. It would have great if i could claim that i wrote it all myself. You can start at the beginning and read up or you can start and the end and travel backwards to see how you got there. Look for a little bit of everything to be included in the series, from science to pop culture and everything in between....


Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness
 
First off 2001 is brilliant.  In many ways it is dated and bit slow, but still there is something incredible about how the movie is filmed then again it is a Kubrick film and almost everyone of his films are incredible.  also ac Clarke who wrote 2001 is one the best sci-fi writers of all time especially with his ability to mix science and fiction.  Man i like starship troopers, but the truth is that movie was a satire.  sorry for that but that is my daily movie tirade.  I have not posted much on RG in while, partly because i have been busy and partly because their topics have been pretty boring or at least not something I do not want to write about. I figured you would mention the part about were did the aliens come from did they evolve or what.  who knows i figure at that point we could just ask them.  but you are right it does not change the question just the context of the question.  If you just removed religion from the equation things would be simpler but i think that is not possible.  the problem is you see religion as this kind artifice of history, while i see religion as artifact of history that some how hints at things of the past and i don't mean that there are gods in Olympus, but that if every religion carries a story of great flood, then odds are there is an historic basis for this event.  As for the topic at hand i figure there is 90% chance that we just evolved from goo, 5% chance that some kind of outside forced helped the process of evolution, be it gods, aliens, asteroids..., and 5% chance of other (something beyond the 1st two). back to the movies topic you seen any good movies recently?  i saw the new Rambo oh man is that movie beyond ridiculous...also any new good music?
 
JIM
 
Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness
  
Wow, I'm impressed.  You are thinking out meaningful replies, taking the time to write them up, and saying interesting things.  The RG boards are probably losing out because I'm getting all this good stuff. OK, you mentioned 2001 in response to my comment about Creationism being hopeless.  Believe it or not I just saw 2001 for the first time a few weeks ago.  I see your point, but remember this: if our civilization was begun by aliens, something created them as well.  And if it turns out that "God" is actually an alien of some sort, well that sort of blows a hole in Christianity's focus on omnipresence, omnipotence, and all of that.  At heart I'm just a religion-hater, Colee.  You know that! By the way, I liked Starship Troopers way better than 2001.  I suppose in the context of the time it was made, 2001 was brilliant or whatever. But compared to Alien, Event Horizon, Total Recall, Star Wars, or an endless parade of Sci-Fi films that don't happen in space (The Fly, Jurassic Park), I think 2001 kind of stinks.  Very mediocre ending. I like the 3rd possibility you mentioned.  That is wholly and diametrically different from Creationism and Evolution.  Nice example. How strongly do you feel about it one way or the other?  How likely does it seem to you?  Maybe it's just the way my mind is hardwired, but it seems very unlikely to be the solution to me.
 
Erik
 
Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness
 
By third choice i mean something that is outside creationism/evolution paradigm or the combination of both.  It is just that we are so hard wired they become nearly impossible to see.  As for creationism being so unrealistic think about it this way one the best sci-fi movies of all time is about creationism, 2001. Just think 100 years from now creationism will be revisited because once we make life out of nothing, what does that say? With that said I do actually have a 3rd possibility, it is something that came up in a discussion about a movie i had just seen and that is concept of things just are.  things occur in the fabric of time that have no beginning or end they just are.  for example the idea of monkeys typing infinitely they would at some point create all works of ligature, now lets assume there are infinite universes if things occurred randomly you could in theory get anything including us.  we could be a product of randomness mere errors in the process.
 
JIM
 
Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness
 
 OK, that's kind of what I said in my e-mail.  That's what I thought you were getting at.  Are you saying you think there could be a third possibility?  To me it seems pretty clear that some extent of creation or evolution or BOTH had to take place. I can't even fathom a third possibility.  We've regressed?  Like, de-evolution?  That's still evolution, just in a different direction.  Anyway, fascinating topic.  That's why I occasionally take a plunge and read about it.  Creationism seems so hopeless to me, because it assumes a premise that is unprovable.  Unless God suddenly decided to show his face (and I don't mean on a Grilled Cheese Sandwich or an overpass in L.A.).
 
Erik
 
Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness
 
oh man i missed that one, though that seems more likely than the insanity that story was real. What i am suggesting is an idea that creationism and evolution are both hard wired into our heads though especially creationism.  i mean think about it, you just make things you never think how they came about.  when you plan something you make it happen.   While the concept of evolution is a large scale idea. In general to large for an individual to see, while creationism is local it is the result of what you see when you do not have enough information and since we evolved in a world with not much information the idea of creationism would be the result.
 
JIM
 
Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness
 
 A manifestation of human nature?  Does that mean that you think we're built/hardwired to understand things in one of two ways (something is created the way it is or it became the way it is), and so we view basically everything from that slant?  Did you see the Yale art student thing seems to be a hoax?  Yale Student Insists Abortion Art Project Is Real, Despite University's Claims of 'Creative Fiction'
 

what the ivy league calls fun
 
Dumb beeotch.  I knew this was too incredible to be true.  She seemed too eager to absorb the spotlight.
 
Erik
 
Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness
 
the article has 3 parts i thought it made some pretty good points and some pretty bad points.  I think doubting science is good but doubting everything is bad.  on a kind of a side note it is interesting that all this doubt on science has seem to spring from the creationist/evolution debate, because i think a 100 years from now they will look back at this point in time and see that this where man transitions from the Darwinian period of science to creationism period of science.  what i mean by that is that science of nature has been looking at ways in which things evolve and how they can control this and from now on they are going to look more at how they can create nature....which goes back to my argument on creationism and evolution; that this debate is hidden in religion but in reality it is merely a manifestation of human nature.  In all honesty i mean the odds are that both are wrong it is just a matter of what theory fits the data better.
 
JIM
 
Subject: RE: is it doubt our just dumbness
 
I hadn't gotten around to reading that one yet.  I'm interested now, though.  That guy Berlinski sounds like my brother.  He's a contrarian to the core-takes no stand except that you are wrong.  Talks out of both sides of his mouth at once.   The Slate writer clearly doesn't like Berlinski.  He cited an example of another contributor at the same website however, who does like his work. More reading required, I suppose
 
Erik
 
Subject: is it doubt our just dumbness
 
doubt or just dumbness
 
i think you should have been sending this to me...

JIM

The Dark Knight or an allegory for George Bush?

The Dark Knight the follow up to wildly successful Batman Begins continues where the last movie left off with Batman continuing his personal crusade against criminals. Batman is now aided by a no-nonsense, by the rules DA, Harvey Dent. Together with Gordon they have made in roads into major crime organization by attaching there sources of money. But a new menace has arrived in Gotham, the Joker. He does not play by the rules, his goals are not to be rich, his goals are to rule through fear, to tear down society. Cold and calculating the Joker uses Gotham’s own weakness against them, he allows fear and anger to tear at society from the inside. Batman realizes that traditional powers can not fight a man that is not driven by clear logic and steps out side the bounds of moral society to track down the Joker. He will torture all who maybe involved he will eaves drop on every phone call in the city, he will stop at nothing to find the joker, but in the end he can not kill the joker. Why? He will say that it is his morals that will not allow him to kill the Joker, but maybe the Joker knows best when he says that Batman can not kill the Joker just as he can not kill Batman because with out the other, the other can not exist. It is Batman’s ego that is his final undoing as much as he claims that he wants to be able to stop being Batman he can not allow himself to get out. So, Batman will take the fall and martyr himself so that society can still see it self as good. But what do we really want? We say we want to be lead by the Harvey Dents of the world but we want to be saved by the Batmans. Maybe we should all just flip a coin as Two Face would as the extreme of both good and evil dictated only by chance, created by the circumstances of life’s experiences.

Mario Kart Wii

In the attempt to give all things a chance I decided to go see Speed Racer this weekend, even though no one watched it when it was in the theatres. Upon arriving at gatornights I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they were having a demonstration of Mario Kart Wii, so much for watching the movie. I am not sure where they found this demo version of the game but it must have been an import as the race commentary was done in a multiple languages, either way I love Mario Kart and I was excited to see the demo. The opening scenes of the game left much to be desired. You are introduced to basic story line of the game. In this version of the game Bowser is in control of the WRL (Wii Racing League) and he has captured baby Mario’s bother baby Luigi, with the help of champion racer Waluigi. Baby Mario must now out race the competition to reclaim WRL for all racers. Baby Mario is help out along the way by baby princess, his father Mario and mother princess, his love interest baby princess, the duo of toad and diddy kong, and of coarse head mechanic Luigi. Now on to the racing, the first race course is pretty simple and looks like a cross between the old Luigi’s circuit and rainbow road. The challenging part of the opening race is that you also race the ghost of baby Luigi who holds the track record. In the demo the racer does not beat the ghost leading me to believe that if you can you will unlock a secret part of the game. The courses get more challenging with an updated Koopa Troopa beach, Kalamari Desert, and Choco Mountain. In both the Kalamari Desert and the Choco Mountain races, you race as team. In the demo the race team consisted of baby Mario, Yoshi, a locked character, and baby princess who gets use a helicopter. In these races your main competition is Wario he is given extra weapons to help defeat you. If you can finish in the overall top three for the cup you are given an invitation to the grand prix. The grand prix is championship race and not a cup like in the older Mario Kart 64 and it is winner take all. The race takes place in an updated Wario stadium and you main competition Waluigi. He is given special weapons to help defeat you. Should you win the race you get to unlock the mystery racer who turns out to be the missing baby Luigi. My overall impression of game was positive. I like the way game looked, the game play was satisfactory not great, and introduction of a story line I think was bad idea. Not only did the story line feel forced, I thought it took away from the overall game play. If I wanted story line racing I would go play Diddy Kong Racing. Overall I give the game a B+, not quite on the level of the old Mario Kart 64 but getting close, maybe with a few more playings my opinion will change.

After typing all this up I just discovered that Gator Nights did not have a demo of Mario Kart Wii playing and instead I was actually watching Speed Racer. What a complete and total let down. Sinse I have already typed up the Mario Kart review I am not going to delete it now. Instead i have just put added an abridged review for Speed Racer. It starts of slow and the style gives you a head ache for about the first 30 minutes, but you soon get use to it. Just as you starting to actually enjoying the movie the bad story line and dialogue have to get in the way. For anyone who grew up watching this show be fore warned you are too old for this movie. What were they thinking? Who thinks it is a good idea to take cartoon from the 60’s and make it into a movie for kids in the 00’s? No wonder no one came and watched this movie (for further reading on this subject see Bewitched). With that said the movie had real potential the whole idea of sports being over corporatized and full of cheating is very contemporary, just think the Patriots meet Barry Bonds meets NASCAR, brilliant. I think that if they had just gone for it and developed a more in depth story line this movie could have become an instant classic an updated version of Any Given Sunday. But instead it looks more like Mario Kart the movie, which is better played than watched. Hmmm…..

A short review of Fool’s Gold:

They are anchored off of Key West and Key West has mountains.

CSI: Maimi

CSI: Miami, The most popular show in world and as a friend of mine likes to say the best comedy on TV and the worst drama ever. How is it that a show this terrible could be so great?

CSI: Miami is show about how we dream things to be it can take the most complicated, convoluted situations and make them simple. It appears to generate its plots based on the random combination of possible subplots. To make sure that you do not get lost, it leaves you signs to make sure that everyone can understand what is going on, both literally and fugitively. If there was drinking game of based on the number times that they show a sign telling their location, you would be drunk before the Who “say we won’t get fooled again”. For me this is where the show usually starts to go down as the first five minutes of the show are some are the best you are going to see the whole week. Each episode starts very formulaic. They start off with somebody either getting murdered or the finding of dead body in the most unexpected of locations. This is then followed up by the best looking CSI crew in the history of crime fighting who are on vacation from their full time jobs as models. Finally when the crime seems clueless or too bizarre Horatio Caine (played by the Leprechaun, looking David Caruso) shows up to see the key clue or makes connection that no one else can make about the crime by simply removing his sun glasses and a witty phrase. In one of my favorite scenes a man appears to have been murdered by an ice sculpture and the coroner asks Horatio "what kind of cold person could have done this", to which he responds “someone who is as cold as ice," he then places his sunglasses back on. And with that another crime is going to be solved with help of the magic sunglasses. Knightrider had Kit; the A-team had BA's van, MacGyver had his Swiss army knife, Magnum PI had his Tiger’s hat, and now a new generation has a great TV prop: Horatio Caine's sunglasses. These are more than ordinary sunglasses, not only do they help solve crimes; they help protect the pale skinned David Caruso from the intense south Florida sun. You would have thought that his prop of choice would have been hat like Magnum PI. Experience shows that glass do little to protect you from the harmful rays of the sun. I was just out fishing a week ago wearing a long sleeve shirt and a hat despite the fact that it was suppose to be sunny and 95. All the tourist going out on the charter boats were looking at us kind of funny as they left the harbor wearing only shorts and sun glasses. If only they realized that they would be the funny looking ones as the easily spotted that evening with their faces looking redder than Caruso’s hair, but at least they had white circles around there eyes.

But the sun and water is why people tune in to watch CSI: Miami. The show uses the Baywatch mantra: if you give them beautiful places and beautiful people, people will watch. Not only are they the best looking CSI crew in the world there victims and suspects are too. Where else on TV can you see a common street criminal come in for a police interview in designer clothes. It is escapism at its best, Hollywood is known for creating places that do not really exist, or do they. There are places like this in the world and one can be found in the beaches of south Walton. This is where the rich spend their beach vacations and mega rich keep their 200 ft yachts. When you enter the gated part of the resort you are met by girls riding bikes in bikinis and old men driving H2 golf carts like they are late to a crime scene. Normally you have to take shuttle through the gated part to get to “village” area, but a friend does some work for a night club owner so we got drive there. As much as the drive was something out of a movie the night club was something else. Just the other day my friend let someone in the back door in exchange for dinner at Ruth’s Chris. Then you get to go upstairs were they have a table full of money counters and you half expect to see someone doing lines of coke in the corner. Just when I had thought I had seen it all, I ran into an old family friend who was telling the story of her husband, a luxury yatch captain, who had just been attached off the coast of Nicaragua by pirates. Because they had just come from Havana were weapons are not allowed, they had to make like MacGyver and improvise molotov cocktails and flare guns. This was enough to scare them off long enough to make a run for it and to call the US state department, who said that they had watched the whole event and that the pirates would not be bothering them anymore. I am sure with Horatio’s glasses you could see that far too.

We all love a good mystery; we also love things to be wrapped up quickly. Who wants to wait for lab results? Just solve the crime in day. If you watch enough CSI: Miami episodes you begin to realize that it is never night in less that is when the murder happened. The reason that it is never night is because they always solve the crime in one day. So if you see the sun going down you know the crime is about to be solved. It is too bad that the real world does not work this way. I was asked to go by the local book store to help them find out if they had been robbed, i.e. help them use their video surveillance equipment. The bookstore reminds of me of something out of the Death on Demand series of novels with about five old ladies huddled around, drinking coffee, trying to piece together the crime. Based on their summary of what had happened I was able to use the video surveillance and found that they were robbed and that they had criminal on tape stealing books and purses and then sneaking out. The only problem was that you cannot enhance the video like they do on the CSI, so the best I could for them was produce a grainy picture of the suspect and a DVD of the crime. It was probably still good enough; though I am sure they will never see the lady again.

So night began to fall As I left town the mist of the post afternoon summer shower began lifting off the bayou and settling into the trees and I began to realize just how beautiful this place was. The haze lasted longer that normal it seemed to hang on to the tree branches and the kudzu, trying to not leave. I thought I was ready to leave but the further I drove the less I wanted to leave and I began to think about something I a comment that a friend once made that you probably do not meat as interesting people in engineering as you do in liberal arts. I agreed with then and still do, but truth is everyone has a story, an angle; it is just a matter of doing a little investigating. A sign appeared out of the fog it pointed right for Tallahassee, I knew where I had to go…Cue the air boat…arhhhhhhhhhhhh…..

Bottle Rocket

Bottle Rocket, Wes Andersons directorial debut, and let me just say I hate this movie. I am not sure what is worse Owen Wilson’s writing or his acting, with that said you can begin to see Wes Andersons story telling and directorial style begin to develop here. The idea of the juxtaposition of roles, where children act as adults and adults act as children, begins in Bottle Rocket and comes to fruition in his next two movies Rushmore and The Royal Tenebaums, is quite brilliant. The only thing that I ask is how you can waste the greatest names ever, Bottle Rocket, on such a terrible movie. Bottle Rockets are one the greatest joys. They take two ideas that have intrigued man kind since the begging of time, fire and flight into one single entity. Today is the Fourth of July, which means that it is national fireworks day and my favorite holiday. I am not sure what the best part of the Fourth is it the food, being around the water, or the Fireworks, I do not think that it really matters. What is important is that you act like you are eight years old, eat too many hot dogs and too much cake, and enjoy the fireworks show. If you should happen to be lucky enough to be a kid it is your day to be an adult and play with fire and light off a few bottle rockets. And, for those of us who do not like birthdays or celebrate them, today is the day that we and everyone else can. Happy 4^th of July.