If you aren't watching STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS lately...

...then you are missing some of the best and most daring storytelling that the Star Wars saga has enjoyed in a heap many moon!

I found myself genuinely shocked at how much I enjoyed the three-part "Nightsisters" arc which concluded a week ago this past Friday. Written by Katie Lucas (daughter of The Flanneled One himself), the storyline showed that Lucasfilm does have the willpower to not play things safe... as well as bring on some bigtime "What the...?!" moments (which if you saw the final moments of "Witches of the Mist" you know what I'm talking about). That new villain Savage Oppress is voiced by Clancy Brown (who I still think should eventually provide the voice of Darth Bane) was the sprinkles on top of a fine dessert indeed.

And then there was this past week's episode, which featured the return of Liam Neeson as the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn, as well as Pernilla August doing the voice of Shmi Skywalker...

I think one of the bigger complaints that many fans have come to have about the saga is that Star Wars is being kept too risk-free and pristine. And there's some frustration about how Star Wars could, should be a toy that Lucasfilm plays with and plays hard.

"Overlords" - which is the beginning of a new three-part story - proved us all wrong. At last, this is some of the potential that Star Wars has always had... and it's being allowed to blossom forth brilliantly.

So to the cast and crew of Star Wars: The Clone Wars: my hat is tipped to you! These episodes have given me all new reason to not only watch this show but also DVR it for further enjoyment :-)

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Federal judge rules "Obamacare" UN-Constitutional!

But it shouldn't have been passed by the House and Senate to begin with!

Y'know, I am getting mighty fed up with the sorry lot of politicians in Washington... in both major parties mind ya... who have NO respect whatsoever for the Constitution.

Obama's "health care reform" was always unconstitutional. It was the most brazen violation of the commerce clause in perhaps all of United States history. Of course it was going to be struck down by somebody in the judiciary sooner or later.

That this was lost on too many members of the House and Senate, who persisted in advocating and then voting for Obamacare in spite of all sane understanding of constitutional law...

Grrrrrr...

Anyone else doubt that the political system of this country is hopelessly and irredeemably broken? I mean, if people like this are the only ones that we can expect to vote for... then what good is voting at all, for the person who sincerely strives in his or her stewardship as a citizen?

Seriously, seriously: this kind of thing makes me understand voter apathy.

Well anyhoo, it's some good news for a change. Read all about Federal Judge Roger Vinson's ruling here. And here's hoping it'll keep getting declared unconstitutional all the way to the Supreme Court.

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Tailgate365: A great site from another awesome friend!

Perhaps I'm being biased in saying this, but I've thought this for a long time: my high school (I'm a proud alum of Rockingham County Senior High) produced some really talented people. Last night I shared a link to the blog of one such person. And tonight I'm gonna share another...

I met T.J. Lee in the summer of 1988 during an enrichment program, so we've known each other for awhile. But I didn't learn of his website Tailgate365 until a few months ago...

Well, what can I say other than this site is pure-D T.J. Lee! It's got entertainment news (in fact Tailgate365 is where I first heard about Henry Caville being the next actor to play Superman), movie trailers, reviews of films and video games, all kinds of good stuff. It even has recipes! One of which, for Jack Daniels wings, I am getting sorely tempted to try for myself 'cuz they sound so good!

So if you want a good destination "for the stuff you like", give head on over to Tailgate365. Hey, you might find some great ideas for this year's Super Bowl "big game" party! :-)

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John Barry, epic movie score composer, has passed away

The baton behind some of the most iconic themes in motion picture history has fallen silent.

John Barry won Academy Awards for his scoring of Out Of Africa, Born Free, The Lion in Winter, and Dances With Wolves. He was responsible for many other soundtracks as well. But it was his work for something which didn't garner him any Oscar nods which he will be most remembered for: the legendary James Bond theme music, beginning with Dr. No in 1962. It was a film series that he was actively composing for until 1987's The Living Daylights.

My personal favorite John Barry score is from what is for me a "guilty pleasure" movie (but hey, it's a guilty pleasure for a lot of people): Walt Disney Picture's seductively disturbing 1979 science-fiction film The Black Hole. For whatever other... issues... that movie has, Barry perfectly captured the sinister brooding mystery of the U.S.S. Cygnus: a long-lost ghost ship teetering on the brink between reason and madness in a place where normal physics lose all meaning.

Here's the write-up at Entertainment Weekly's site about John Barry, his life and his long career. He will be missed.

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Out-Of-Season Bear Alert

I don't know if this warrants a 9-1-1 call or what, but to this blog's readers here in Rockingham County, North Carolina:

Be advised that a large black bear was spotted by Yours Truly on Vernon Road not far from Rockingham Community College earlier this evening.

Yeah, I'm certain it was a bear. At first I wondered if it might be a large black dog instead. Until I saw its face and muzzle. It's a bear all right.

It was acting a bit lethargic. Walking on all fours with its head going from side to side. Maybe he (or she) had just woken up from hibernation and was looking for a mid-winter snack?

Anyway, now y'all know. There's a bear somewhere around Vernon Road.

Ummm... don't tease it?

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My thoughts about the situation in Egypt

It's late. Had a way long day. I'm tired. So I'll make this quick. Or as quick as I'm apt to be with this sort of thing...

In a way Egypt is demonstrating why I was always against the Iraq War that began in 2003. And it's also demonstrating why the American government is never going to feel safe about pulling out of that country.

Because once we do, Iraq is going to very quickly turn into what Egypt is becoming now.

The uprising in Egypt began in large part to long-festering mistrust of Hosni Mubarak (who has been ruling Egypt since I was knee high to a grasshopper). That's thirty-some years. Way too long for anyone to be in power. I don't blame the Egyptian people for wanting to peaceably put an end to his regime.

But increasingly I'm seeing the efforts of the "nice 'n peaceable" Egyptians getting co-opted by radicals like the Muslim Brotherhood.

And in short: what's now happening in Egypt is looking insanely like what went down Iran way in 1979.

I can understand why the average Iranian was honked-off at the Shah. There was plenty enough of that to fuel the urge to overthrow his government in Iran at the time. The thing is, the average Iranian didn't care to be ruled over by wackos like Ayatollah Khomeini. The politics of the revolutionaries was immaterial. They just happened to have enough momentum to be the ones to topple the ruling order.

Sorta like what happened in Vietnam. Anyone seriously believe that the Vietcong were Communists purely because of its ideology? Feh! Communism was just a means to an end for what Ho Chi Minh and his gang were promising: an end to a thousand years of fighting for Vietnamese freedom.

My gut feeling: Egypt is going to wind up as another Iran. Maybe not as quickly as Iran turned into, but yeah: basically a bunch of good people who will realize too late that they are being ruled by a small band of nutcases. If you want me to use the words "radical Islamic state" then I suppose I've reason to.

And if we pull out of Iraq now or anytime in the foreseeable future, the same thing is going to happen there: people wanting freedom only to be co-opted by the radicals. And then we're looking at a bunch of Mid-East gone Islamic theocracy with a lot of shootin' irons and worse.

Awright, that's my analysis. G'nite!

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Michelle Bradsher enters the blogosphere!

In case anyone's wondering where the list of links went to: I haven't forgotten about it. In fact it'll probably reappear sometime this week if I can find time to put it together anew. It's just something that I made a secondary priority during this blog's recent redesign. And I'm looking forward to spinning some traffic toward friends and accomplices who also maintain blogsome presence on the Intertubes :-)

As it turns out, tonight I discovered another to add to the roll. I have known Michelle Bradsher for a long time (like, going back to seventh grade). And I am delighted that she has chosen to share her unique voice and her talent for conveying the stories of others on her new site, Bradsher's Blog.

Welcome to blogging, Michelle! I'm looking forward to reading your site and I am glad to spread the word about it with others :-)

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Busy week ahead

Look gang, the next few days I'm gonna be swamped with stuff. Especially with the lead-up to opening night for Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of Gypsy. I'm not gonna have much time to entertain you, enlighten you and otherwise play around with your heads like I usually do.

So here's something to tide you over until The Knight Shift resumes regular blogging. It's a YouTube clip that blurs the line between reality and imagination... well, more than most things that readily come to mind. From 1982's The Fantastic Miss Piggy Show, it's Tony Clifton!

Depending on how old you are, this video will either make you laugh... or confuse the heck out of you. Ironically it's the older viewers who are likely to be scratching their heads in wonder.

"If you believed they put a man on the moon..."

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Twenty-five years ago today...

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

-- John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941

In memory of the crew of Mission STS 51-L of the Space Shuttle Challenger, who perished on this day a quarter century ago, January 28th, 1986.

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Let's conduct a weather experiment!

Just for fun (or maybe not)...

I have heard it said, since at least 1993, that if it thunders in the winter that it means snow is coming ten days later.

The first time I was told that, it was by Dad in February of that year. Exactly ten days later we had "the Storm of the Century" blizzard.

And every time since then that it has thundered during winter, we have had snow: if not precisely ten days later then very closely thenabouts.

Well, we had thunder this morning here in Reidsville, North Carolina. A lot of thunder.

So with this post as a benchmark, I'll check back in ten days from now Lord willing, and we'll see if there's any wintery preciptation :-)

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GYPSY: 10 days until Opening Night!

Y'know, it's incorrect to refer to this ethnic group as "Gypsy". The real term is "Romani". The reason they got tagged with the name "Gypsy" is 'cuz as they spread into Europe from their original home in the Indian subcontinent, the locals thought wrongly that they were Egyptian.

So don't you think that "Roma Rose Lee" has a better ring to it? Or is that just me?

Well anyhoo...

Next Friday night, February 4th, is Opening Night for Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of Gypsy! Rehearsals have been going great. Everyone was roaring with laughter last night during the run-through of "You Gotta Get A Gimmick". And I am having an absolute blast playing Cigar. He is completely sleazy and, well I just can't help but have fun with this character: he is the manager of a burlesque house, after all. Expect lots of yelling and waving my stogie around. And expect lots of other stuff that probably couldn't have been done in Rockingham County twenty years ago :-P

Gypsy runs for six shows from February 4th through the 13th. Hit here to go to the Theatre Guild website for ticket information.

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Message on a church sign that I saw this weekend...

"Following Christ means to be a witness, not be a prosecutor".

Very, very true. And the more that I've thought about it, the more I've appreciated how that is everything that it truly means to be a Christian.

It is not us that the world should be seeing, but Christ within us. We will always fail. But He never fails.

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Release trailer for DUKE NUKEM FOREVER. Yes, really.

On April 28th, 1997, video game studio 3D Realms announced that Duke Nukem Forever, the follow-up to its 1996 hit Duke Nukem 3-D, was in development.

Fourteen years, hundreds of thousands of wasted man-hours, numerous rendering engines long gone obsolete, two or more full generations of console technology and a bankruptcy later, Gearbox Software - which picked up the pieces last year to try to make some sense of this mess - will be releasing Duke Nukem Forever on May 6th.

Yes, as in: this year. 2011.

Look! Release trailer!

Here's the official synopsis:

Put on your shades and prepare to step into the boots of Duke Nukem,whose legend has reached epic proportions in the years since his last adventure. The alien hordes are invading and only Duke can save the world. Pig cops, alien shrink rays and enormous alien bosses can't stop our hero from accomplishing his one and only goal: to save the world, save the babes and to be a bad-ass while doing it. The King arrives with an arsenal of over-the-top weapons, non-stop action, and unprecedented levels of interactivity. This game puts the pedal to the metal and tongue firmly in cheek. Shoot hoops, lift weights, read adult magazines, draw crude messages on whiteboards or ogle the many hot women that occupy Duke's life - that is if you can pull yourself away long enough from destroying alien invaders. Duke Nukem was andwill forever be a gaming icon, and this is his legend.

I wonder if THIS guy is going to get his pre-order honored by GameStop.

I still can't believe this is seriously happening. All the jokes about "Duke Nukem Whenever", "Duke Nukem If Ever", "Duke Nukem Not Ever" are about to come to an end. When this game was first announced the Star Wars Special Editions were still in theaters. Bill Clinton had not yet done "that thing" with a cigar and Monica Lewinsky. Gas was ridiculously cheap. You could go to the airport without getting molested by government goons. "High-speed Internet" meant 57k baud...

I probably won't be buying it, but I'm planning on being at GameStop for the midnight release, just to see it with my own two eyes :-P

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Bipolar as experienced by Kay Redfield Jamison

The series that I have recently begun, "Being Bipolar", is picking up some intense interest. I posted Part 2: "Sketching Uniquet" late last week. Meanwhile Part 1: "The Tale of the Two Chris Knights" has become the most-visited page on the blog over the past several days.

During the weekend I made the decision that for the next few installments of the series at least, I am going to refrain from reading any other scholarly material about bipolar disorder. Why? Because I'm trying to honestly and accurately portray and convey my own struggle with bipolar disorder. And well, guess you could say that I'm afraid that I might "cross contaminate" my experiences with those of others. But no doubt I'll be delving into the research sooner than later.

The first thing that I plan to read is An Uniquet Mind, the memoir of someone whose name has come up consistently during the investigation of my condition: Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Jamison is widely considered to be one of the foremost authorities on bipolar disorder... in large part because she herself has had to live with it for most of her life. In addition to her books (the list of which also includes Night Falls Fast, a study of suicide) she has made numerous appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Charlie Rose and other television outlets, and she enjoys considerable demand as a public speaker.

I'm looking forward to reading An Unquiet Mind. But in the meantime, I feel more than a little led to share with my readers a link to this page of quotes by Kay Redfield Jamison about her own ordeal with bipolar disorder and what she has gained and learned from her experiences. I found that what she has written about bipolar very much parallels what I have been trying to share in my own words about the condition.

And she's a professional! I'm just a dude with a blog. That makes Dr. Jamison's word on the subject all the more worth checking out! :-)

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Third TRON movie gearing up already!

And before anyone asks, lifelong best friend Chad Austin and I are already planning our trip to the cinema to see this.

But first, if you haven't already bought Daft Punk's electrifying soundtrack to Tron Legacy...

...then you really oughtta go to iTunes (where I bought it from) or buy it old-school physical media from a retailer and add it to your collection. In all seriousness, I'm finding it increasingly harder to find any friends who haven't got this album yet. Lately I'm listening to this, well... just about any time that I need music. Just gotta be careful when listening to "Son of Flynn" and "The Game Has Changed" while driving 'cuz like "Duel of the Fates" did from the Star Wars Episode I soundtrack, it's too easy to find myself with the pedal to the metal :-P

I didn't know until today that it was Cillian Murphy playing Edward Dillinger Jr. in the board room scene early in Tron Legacy. Had I caught that when we saw the movie a few weeks ago (read my review of Tron Legacy here) that would have been a huge flashing red hint that there were perhaps larger plans afoot for the Tron franchise.

Now comes word from Ain't It Cool News that the upcoming Blu-ray and DVD release of Tron Legacy will feature three "teaser" scenes for... wait for it... the THIRD Tron movie. What are these scenes? The first one is reportedly Alan (Bruce Boxleitner) confronting the creator of RAM (the program that Flynn befriended in 1982's Tron, and again played by Dan Shor). RAM's human user, it is revealed, is the person behind the "Flynn Lives" campaign.

The second scene has Quorra (Olivia Wilde's character from Tron Legacy) still out of the Grid in human form, telling some reporters that she had just spoken with Kevin Flynn.

And the third teaser scene? Just some text messages... but oh boy, what they portend! It's an exchange between Edward Dillinger and his father (Ed Dillinger, who was played by David Warner in the original) about how "everything is going as planned".

Does this mean that Warner will be coming back not only as Dillinger but also as Sark or... be still my geeky heart... the Master Control Program?!

Looks like we'll be finding out soon enough. More Tron is always a good thing :-)

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World running out of Internet (as we've known it)

Things could be about to get really interesting pretty soon...

Sometimes around 4 a.m. on February 2nd - next Wednesday morning - the very last of the still-available IP addresses under the traditional IPv4 scheme will be allocated.

And then the Internet as it has existed since IPv4 was established in 1977 will, for all intents and purposes, be running on empty.

"Who the hell knew how much address space we needed?" said Vint Cerf, Internet pioneer and father of the World Web Web. At the time Cerf and his colleagues thought that it would be a ridiculously long amount of time (they may have assumed it would not be within their own lifetime) before the Internet would run out of IP numbers. They couldn't have possibly foreseen not only Internet usage in private home but also mobile devices, streaming video and the like. In 1977, 4.3 billion possible IP addresses was a gracious plenty.

The good news is that the "IPocalypse" may not be too bad, since technicians have known about the shortage for quite some time and have been developing the IPv6 protocol: an upgraded system that has 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 possible addresses.

But the possibility remains: until IPv6 gets full implemented, some rather wonky things might be set to happen within the next several days.

(And I was so hoping to get an iPad soon too... :-P)

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