So here it is, my first-ever political campaign TV ad:
Well anyway, if you're watching Season 2 (28 if you're counting from the original run of Doctor Who) in the States on the Sci-Fi Channel right now, tonight at 8 o'clock brings us "Tooth and Claw", the second standard Doctor Who episode featuring David Tennant as the tenth Doctor. Definitely a stronger episode than the previous entry "New Earth". Tonight's is a story involving werewolves, wire-fu The Matrix martial artists, and a face-to-face meeting with Her Majesty Queen Victoria. It's also a fairly important episode in the current overall mythology of the show because it has a little to do with "Torchwood", which you will be hearing plenty more about as the season progresses. All things considered, a solid episode that kicks off a whole string of solid stories that continues over the next few weeks with "School Reunion" and "The Girl in the Fireplace".
I'm starting to wonder if the "island" is even an island at all. Maybe it's just one really big peninsula of a much-larger landmass. Heck as far off-course as Flight 815 was it could be part of Antarctica that somehow stays tropical (think the "Savage Land" from Marvel Comics). However it is, that lil' island is starting to get awfully crowded with crazy geography. Maybe the producers will release a comprehensive map of the place someday.
To everyone who was involved: thank you.
'Ban Harry Potter or face more school shootings'This woman is positively nuts! Everything she is claiming about J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter books is a bold-faced lie... and she's using the name of God to perpetrate it.
Last updated at 13:20pm on 4th October 2006A woman who maintains that the Harry Potter books are an attempt to teach children witchcraft is pushing for the second time to have them banned from school libraries.
Laura Mallory, a mother of four from the Atlanta suburb of Loganville, told a Georgia Board of Education officer that the books by British author J.K. Rowling, sought to indoctrinate children as Wiccans, or practitioners of religious witchcraft.
Referring to the recent rash of deadly assaults at schools, Mallory said books that promote evil - as she claims the Potter ones do - help foster the kind of culture where school shootings happen.
That would not happen if students instead read the Bible, Mallory said.
She added that the books were harmful to children who are unable to differentiate between reality and fantasy.
The children, she said, try to imitate Harry Potter and cast spells on classmates.
"They're not educationally suitable and have been shown to be harmful to some kids," Mallory said.
She argued that teachers do not assign other religious books like the Bible as student reading.
It was Mallory's second public campaign against the popular fiction series, after trying to get her son's elementary school to ban the books in August 2005.
Victoria Sweeny, an attorney representing the Gwinnett County Board of Education in Atlanta's eastern suburbs, which had ruled against her in May, said that if schools were to remove all books containing reference to witches, they would have to ban mainstays like "Macbeth" and "Cinderella."
"There's a mountain of evidence for keeping Harry Potter," she said, adding that the books don't support any particular religion but present instead universal themes of friendship and overcoming adversity.
Sweeny said parents, teachers and scholars have found them a good tool to stimulate children's imagination and encourage them to read.
The hearing officer presiding over the appeal will make a recommendation to the state board, which will then decide the case at its meeting in December.
Mallory is appealing after the Gwinnett County school board ruled in favour of the books.
Wiccans consider themselves witches, pagans or neo-pagans, and say their religion is based on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons.
I'll leave with this thought to ponder: people like Laura Mallory will no more understand the Holy Bible than they will the Harry Potter books. And when it all gets boiled down, Mallory is approaching the Bible as a "magic spellbook" even more than she thinks the Potter novels are.
Why is he smoking a cigar? Or maybe its medicinal marijuana: "When 900 years old you reach, your eyesight not be so good it will."What's the deal? My first-ever campaign commercial. So far I've notched up 23 hours dedicated to getting this one minute of footage assembled together. Some of that is time that could have probably been saved 'cuz I've been doing some "tweaking" in Premiere Pro and After Effects. What benefits come from that may not show up that well on TV anyway... but I'm a compulsive perfectionist. If it can possibly be made better, I'll take the extra effort to do it. In the end it's all the little things that make the difference.
It's coming. Soon. Brace yourself: I was told tonight that one thing that happens in this commercial makes Lyndon Johnson's "Daisy Girl" ad seem mild in comparison :-P
Which proves all the more that the major parties - Republican and Democrat alike - have too great a stranglehold on this country.
Negron didn't have to submit himself to any of the scrutiny that is supposed to come with being a Congressional candidate. He's not going to be running because he gathered enough signatures on a petition to warrant his name being on the ballot. No, the only reason he's running is because the party bosses hand-picked him to be "their man". Because all that matters to them is "keeping control" of Congress... to hell what is in the best interest of the people of that district.
I've written in the past few days how the process of my being an electoral candidate for the first time has led to some personal change and growth. Well, I'm going to write more about this in the weeks and months following the election, but I'm compelled to say this much now at least: for all the talk about "voter apathy" in this country, why should the average American feel morally obliged to go to the polls in an election, if the American people aren't in charge of their own country anymore?
In a sane world, nobody would be filling in for Foley on the ballot. The contest would belong to whoever it was who's left in the race (which I guess would default to the Democrats, since no one else is really allowed to run in an election in this country)... and tough cookies for the Republicans.
But I guess I shouldn't be expecting anyone - from either of the two major parties - to do the decent thing by not circumventing the American people, should I?
Ali versus Frazier it wasn't. Things took a serious turn when Atlantic Records didn’t see the funny side of "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody of James Blunt's hit, You’re Beautiful.Thta's the DUMBEST thing I've ever heard in my life!! No wonder Al is editing the Atlantic Records entry on Wikipedia to say "YOU SUCK" in the "White and Nerdy" video.Yankovic recorded You're Pitiful as the lead single to his new album, Straight Outta Lynwood, but pulled the track when Atlantic refused to give permission. Blunt had apparently told the Los Angeles based comedian he was fine with it but Yankovic's label, Volcano, didn't want to mess with the major.
Either way, Yankovic usually seeks the artist's blessing as a courtesy before commercially releasing his skewed remakes of hit songs.
Prince, Paul McCartney and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page have apparently knocked back Weird Al makeovers but most artists relish Yankovic's humorous and harmless homages.
Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler played guitar on the Beverly Hillbillies parody of Money For Nothing while executives at Nirvana's label once told the comedian that his Smells Like Teen Spirit remake sold an extra million copies of Nevermind.
However, the wise men guiding Blunt's career don't share Yankovic's zany sense of humour.
"The reason I heard was that they felt like You're Beautiful was getting too much attention," Yankovic, 46, explains from his home in LA. "They don't want him perceived as a one-hit wonder. They thought You're Beautiful was getting bigger than he was... and that my parody would put more focus on that song."
Atlantic didn't immediately put the kybosh on the parody, rather the suits asked Yankovic to wait until the soppy UK singer-songwriter had established himself as an artist. He obliged, for a while, but the album full of timely parodies couldn't hold for more than a few months.
A frustrated Yankovic pushed the label for a final answer and was eventually told that they didn't want the song to ever see the light of day.
"At that point I just lost my mind because they had basically pushed back my album and I had no idea what I was going to be doing," he says. "They basically jerked me around."
While the song won't be commercially released, Yankovic made You're Pitiful available for free download via www.weirdal.com — and the MP3 became a worldwide viral hit. Despite his run-in with Atlantic, Yankovic will stick to his policy of seeking approval before unleashing his comic gems. "I've always done that historically and I'd like to keep doing it, but I'd have to say that experiences like this make me wish that I wasn't so dependent on the kindness of strangers."
I actually used to have almost every Star Wars toy on this page! The only exception was the 13-inch Boba Fett figure. That's worth mentioning because this is the 1979 Sears catalog and Boba Fett didn't actually make his big-screen debut until the following year in The Empire Strikes Back. As far back as the Holiday Special in 1978 (which George Lucas will probably thank you for not thinking about) they were hard at work cultivating Boba Fett into a future bad-a$$ and he was already getting action figures made of him. As for who this "Zargon" guy is in the lower right-hand corner, I've a very vague recollection of the toy line he was from but it wasn't Star Wars: guess they needed someone as big as 13-inch Fett to balance out the rest of the page.Anyways, if you have some time to kill, you might enjoy looking through the rest of Wishbook's photo sets. Which you'll probably wind up laughing at when you check out how people used to dress back in the early 70s and 80s.
In the meantime, two other candidates for Rockingham County Board of Education have television commercials already up and running. Being that I'm into filmmaking/video production and have ummmm... more than a little interest in this election, I thought it would be neat to post links to their commercials. If any other candidates produce commercials and put them online, I'll post links to theirs too.
So here they are: the first two candidates in the Rockingham County Board of Education race to have TV commercials. They are in Windows Media format so make sure you have the right player installed on your computer...
Running for local office has lent itself toward much contemplation about where we are as a country. Especially in the past few days and weeks. And I hate to say this but the more I've let this new eye bear down on things, the more disillusioned I've become with the current state of things in America.
How has it come to this: that we are a nation run by a gang of liars and opportunists and petty hustlers and con artists and adulterers... and now pedophiles? I know, that's more or less a rhetorical question because this sort of thing has been going on for so long now that we've actually become inured to it. But that doesn't mean that it's no less a damning conclusion to draw from the shape of things.
Like I said, I'm probably going to have more to say about this in the near future, after the election is finished, however that goes down. But I'll end this post on one thing that I've come to realize: that the root of much of the misery and malfeasance that's taking place in this country is that we have pursued power instead of righteousness before God.
And I'm especially levelling that charge at a lot of the Christians in this land.
(Yeah I mean you too Jerry Falwell: "The Lord will take care of that" indeed!)
And with tonight being when Season 2 (or 28, your pick) debuted here in the U.S., here is the "teaser" video that aired on Doctor Who Confidential last year. This really gives you an idea of what to expect in the coming months...
By the way, speaking of printed advertisements for my campaign, here is the bumper sticker that's on my car:
You can buy a pack of blank bumper stickers (2 per letter-sized sheet) at Office Depot. Then download a Word template from OfficeDepot.com and use your ink-jet printer to make your sticker. They're supposed to be pretty water-resistant as they are, but I also gave it several coats of transparent gloss spray paint before I peeled it off the sheet. And so far, in spite of all the rain storms we've had, it looks as fresh as it did when it came out of the printer. No doubt there'll be a lot more fun to be had with these sticker sheets after the campaign is over :-)
And with that, the Doctor (who had been played by Christopher Eccleston) regenerated... and became the new Doctor: played by David Tennant (Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire).
People in Great Britain have already seen what happens after that on Doctor Who. Tonight, American fans will finally get to see the further adventures of the Doctor and Rose. It all starts tonight at 8 o'clock with last year's holiday special "The Christmas Invasion" (I downloaded it the day after last Christmas: click here for my review of it). Taking place immediately after the last moments of last season's finale "The Parting of the Ways", the TARDIS crashes near Rose's old home just in time for Christmas. Tennant's Doctor walks out and collapses outside and Rose spends much of the episode trying to convince Jackie and Mickey that this is, indeed, the same Doctor that she had been travelling with. As the Doctor recovers from his regeneration, aliens arrive and start trying to take over. Won't say anything more than that but there are some really crazy visual gags you have to see to believe in this episode.
"The Christmas Invasion" lasts an hour and a half, and will be followed by the first real episode of Season 2 (or 28 if you're reckoning from old-school Who), "New Earth". Which I didn't think at the time that this was all that strong an opening for a new season of Doctor Who but it does have two things going for it: another appearance by the Face of Boe. And it has the return of the Lady Cassandra: arguably one of the most bizarre Doctor Who villains of all time ("Moisturize me! Moisturize me!"). There are some really excellent episodes coming up though in the next few weeks (like "Class Reunion") and I'll be posting more about them as they're about to broadcast. In the meantime, sit back tonight and enjoy some the newest season of Doctor Who... which is coming about six months earlier than most of us were expecting!
