Report and photos from the orchestral scoring for WATCHMEN

Good friend Marco van Bergen directs our attention to this story at ScoringSessions.com, showing us composer Tyler Bates and an 87-member orchestra recording the music for Watchmen. Gobs of photos at the link, some of which depict scenes from the movie. According to the report, the Watchmen soundtrack will be released by Reprise Records on March 3rd 2009, three days before the movie comes out in theaters.

Read More

A glimpse of what's coming to America?

Riots erupt in Reykjavik, Iceland after the citizens of that country, feeling more than a little ticked-off now that their country has gone bankrupt, vent their rage against their government (which has now collapsed)...

Mash down here for more about what's going down over there.

I've never been to Iceland, but I've met enough folks who have visited the place to know that the people there are a pretty hardy and patient lot: it takes a lot to get 'em riled up, especially this bad. The country's banks have failed miserably, and its coalition government has now finger-pointed itself into oblivion.

Gotta wonder if we might see this same sorta thing happening on our own side of the pond in the not-too-distant future...

(Thanks to Phillip Arthur for passing along the link.)

Read More

Cover art for Star Wars horror novel DEATHTROOPERS

Awright, who else is seeing this, and thought that we must be getting a Star Wars/Hellraiser crossover...?

StarWars.com revealed the image earlier today. Deathtroopers by Joe Schreiber is the first ever true horror story set in the galaxy far, far away (no, I'm not counting the "Galaxy of Fear" books either). The novel is scheduled for release later this year, fittingly enough just before Halloween.

Read More

DAMNED REVENUERS! American legend Popcorn Sutton sentenced to 18 months in prison (FREE POPCORN!)

Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton, the legendary moonshiner and genuinely unique American character, was sentenced today in federal court in Tennessee to a prison term of 18 months, after earlier pleading guilty to the charges stemming from the raid on his still last year.

And adding insult to injury, Sutton "agreed to allow his moonshining photos and videos and criminal history to be used to further the education and deterrence goals of Project Safe Neighborhoods."

In other words, rather than praising Popcorn Sutton as the living cultural resource that he is, the sons of bastitches from the government are going to force Popcorn to go fully against his unique sense of identity. The lesson here could not be more obvious: "Conform to the state or we will hurt you."

No, I don't have any sympathy for those assholes. If you want to see what is destroying America, look at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents, the judges, and everyone else who has conspired, against an overwhelming tide of public sympathy with Popcorn, to quash him good.

Grrrrrr...

Well, I'm gonna keep the "Free Popcorn Sutton!" icon in the margin of this blog, as ongoing testament against how our own government is all too often the enemy of freedom and liberty. "Change"? My ass!

Read More

Cult leader Johnny Robertson: In his own words

Longtime readers of this blog already know about cultist Johnny Robertson and his self-proclaimed "Church of Christ" (which is nothing like the mainstream Churches of Christ that most people know and respect). About how Robertson, flunky/second cousin James Oldfield and their "Religious Review" charade go around the area accosting the decent (and in my mind, legitimate) churches, and then televise their harassment on WGSR... which is now widely acknowledged, Robertson is the de facto owner of.

Robertson, and what he represents, is not real Christianity. There is no love, no humility, no thankfulness for the grace of God that comes out of what they have been doing. All that Johnny Robertson has ever demonstrated that he is capable of producing is hate, and spite, and division, and... dare I say it? Yeah, I will: evil.

But... why should you have to take my word for that?

During his show tonight I recorded what Robertson was saying. I'm going to post some of the more notable comments that he made, and let you, Dear Reader, decide for yourself what to make of this. If you are like most people, I would guess that you would ascertain that what you are about to read is a disturbing glimpse into a very dark soul, indeed.

Remember: I didn't have to make anything up for this post. Everything you are about to read are Johnny Robertson's own words, spoken during his What Does The Bible Say? broadcast tonight, January 25th 2009, out of WGSR Star 39 in Reidsville, North Carolina...

"I would wrap that stuff around their necks!"

"Why are we so strong in this area?!?"

"We are the most morally well-behaved people in this area!"
(Editors note: does "morally well-behaved" mean confronting people in their homes, having dissidents followed by fellow cult members, and outright lying about another church in the area by accusing it of child pornography?)

"I will tie that around their necks and they will never say it again!"

"I will make him look so bad...!"

"Sir you've never seen me mad!"

"He is all mouth! That is what all of them are!"

"I spend THOUSANDS of dollars to open the phone lines up!"
(Editor's note: earlier Robertson boasted that his self-styled "Church of Christ" takes up no offering... but he didn't care to mention that he gets practically all of his funding from wealthy cult members in Texas and other places far west of this area.)

"Because what you believe is not in the Bible!" (talking about Baptists)

"There is not a preacher in this town that knows as much Bible as I do!"

"They are all afraid of me!"

"I'm presenting myself just like Jesus did! Nobody could answer Him. That's what I'm doing. These guys can't answer me!"

"I believe the way I demonstrate that is the case is by answering all of these people that their doctrines are all too weak to shut me up!"

"There's no such thing as a Baptist!"

"THIS (referring to his cult) is the church that Paul was in!"

"There is a church that is determined to preach the truth and only the truth and that is the church that I represent, and that is why everyone is afraid of me!"

As Rod Serling might put it...

"Submitted for your approval."

It certainly does seem like something out of The Twilight Zone, does it not?

If anyone can tell me how Robertson is reflecting the love of Christ, the mind of Christ, or the grace of Christ with his words and his actions - and then daring to insinuate that only he comes with the truth of God - then I would certainly welcome such exposition in the comments for this blog entry.

And if you are a member of the Martinsville Church of Christ: are you really that proud to be represented by such a man who brags of being your minister?

Would any congregation be proud, for that matter?

Read More

Scientists claim: Tycho Brahe was murdered!

Tycho Brahe was one of the most accomplished astronomers in history. He was also quite the eccentric: for most of his life he wore a metal nose to replace the real one that he lost in a duel, he kept a dwarf human as something of a pet, and supposedly he died in 1601 from straining his bladder. The story goes that Tycho was at a party, had too much wine to drink and thought it would be the acme of "bad manners" if he did the sensible thing by going out to "drain the main vein" (as my old Bible study partner once put it).

Now a group of scientists are preparing to exhume the body of Tycho Brahe, more than 400 years after his death in Prague. Their motive for disturbing the great scholar's remains: investigating the possibility that Brahe was poisoned as part of a contract killing. The alleged mastermind of what may be a plot of murder most foul: Christian IV, the King of Denmark, using a count from the royal court as the hitman. Adding to the intrigue: scholars have apparently found the diary in which the murderer confesses to the crime.

Meanwhile, so far as we know, Zachary Taylor is still dead from ice cream gone bad...

Read More

The final scene from LOST episode "The Lie"

I've watched both "Because You Left" and "The Lie" twice more since Lost had its season premiere this past Wednesday night. But the very last scene from "The Lie" has so intrigued me that I've lost count how many times I've played through it again. Guess it's such a gothic, mysterious scene that in its own way touches on Lost's themes of religion and science.

So here it is if you also can't get enough of it: Ms. Hawking working in the basement of a church, in what looks to be a DHARMA station that we haven't seen before, before she tells Ben that he only has seventy hours to do whatever it is he's got in mind... or "God help us all":

Read More

Kay Yow, beloved women's basketball coach, has passed away

The sad news just broke in the past short while that Kay Yow, the longtime women's basketball coach at North Carolina State University - and considered by many to have been one of the greatest women's coaches the game has ever seen - has passed away at the age of 66 following a long battle with cancer.

Yow had been head coach at N.C. State since 1975, following stints as a high school coach and then at what used to be Elon College (now Elon University). She also coached the gold medal-winning women's basketball team at the 1988 Olympic Games. Yow was also a multiple Hall of Fame recipient.

She had been diagnosed with cancer in 1987, but she fought it into remission. Unfortunately, it had recently returned.

Yow was a renowned and beloved icon not just here in North Carolina, but across the sport and around the world. And, she shall certainly be missed. Our thoughts and prayers go out to her family and friends today.

Click here for a chronology at the News & Observer following Yow's long and illustrious career.

Read More

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss..."

President Obama plans to uphold the power that George W. Bush asserted in regards to spying on Americans without a warrant.

So much for not sacrificing our ideals for safety that Obama kept talking about this past week after he got sworn into office.

I hate to say "I told you so" but... many people, including myself, were screaming as loud as we could during the past several years that the horrible precedents that Bush was setting, would likely come back to haunt us. For almost eight years, Bush got away with violating the Constitution - in both rule and spirit - and his cheerleaders kept assuring us that Bush "had no choice" but to do these things to keep us secure.

Now those same powers have gone to a man that many of these same people have not been able to hide their sheer hatred toward. And however it is that Obama might choose to exercise those powers, these same people have no moral or logical grounds to oppose him.

Consider whatever else I might have otherwise posted about this, as an exercise for the reader.

Read More

The Apple Macintosh is 25 years old today

It was twenty-five years ago today that the Macintosh from Apple went on sale to the public.

In honor of the occasion, here is the classic commercial (directed by Ridley Scott) that ran during the Super Bowl two days before the product launched...

Read More

Monty Python has 23,000% increase in DVD sales during past two months...

...and it's being attributed to the official Monty Python channel on YouTube and all the free videos on it.

This was a sales gimmick from the very beginning (see my post from November when Monty Python launched the channel) and, apparently (LOL!) it has been an earth-shattering success! Monty Python is now sitting pretty in the #2 slot on Amazon.com for TV and movies, and as Mashable notes that's likely because of all of the links embedded in the YouTube clips that take viewers to the appropriate product page at the Amazon site.

The lesson from this should not be lost on those from the RIAA, and others who have been overly-zealous in enforcing "copyright" on the flimsiest of grounds. This story demonstrates more than adequately that YouTube can be a marketing powerhouse and that it is a friend to commercial art, not a foe to be shunned.

(Thanks to Phillip Arthur for passing along the story!)

Read More

Shiny new blogger posts brilliant take on software piracy

Hot out of the gate and fresh into the blogosphere comes Matthew Federico, a fellow North Carolinian and I think that after just a few posts, his blog is promising some good things. Like this essay he just posted about video game piracy, and he covers all the bases rather eloquently...

Stealing is bad. Stealing is something you just don't do. You don't go into a candy store and just steal that Hersey's Kiss. You don't take what is yours, and you only get possession of something when you hand over your hard earned cash for it. You work hard, you spend hours after hours doing whatever it is that you do, you get your paycheck, you pay your taxes. You pay for insurance and food and gas and electricity and your cable. After all that, then you get to spend your hard earned money on anything you please, if that suits your fancy.

It's a system that makes sense. That is how economy works, in a nutshell. We all make a service or product, we get money, we pay for our essentials, then we buy our luxuries. And who made those luxuries? Why, somebody who was making a service, just like you.

So, what does our morale upbringing tells us when we think of stealing? Why, we remember that it is almost like we are stealing from ourselves. Thus, stealing is wrong. One hundred and one percent, all the time, always, and forever...

Mash down here for the rest of Matt's thoughts.

Read More

Cover of this February's issue of MAD Magazine

You gotta hand it to MAD Magazine: though its quality has declined over the past decade or so because of advertisements and the transition to color (but then again the MAD staff will probably be the first to argue that the magazine never had much quality anyway) it's still gets props for proving that it's willing to skewer anybody. Take a gander at the cover of the February 2009 issue, bearing witness to the first 100 minutes of Barack Obama's presidency...

Now that's a classic MAD cover! Go buy a copy and help the economy! :-P

Read More

Celine Dion is smiling at my family

My sister Anita got something like second-row seats for the Celine Dion concert last night, and she snapped a bunch of pics of the beloved diva looking and smiling straight at where she and her friends were sitting. Darn! If I had known Anita was plotting this, I'da cajoled my way into going with her, 'cuz I'm a big fan of Dion! Then again, if I had gone last night I would have missed Lost Season 5's premiere. Decisions, decisions...

Still, I'm glad that Anita got to go. She has certainly been letting everyone that she knows how excited she was about it for the past two weeks :-P

Read More

Fast reaction to LOST Season 5 premiere

HOLY $%&@!!!

This show has come completely off the chain!

That was season finale-quality material.

Good safety tip we learned tonight: never, ever put knives in the automatic dishwasher with the blade pointing up. Unless, you know, you need them like that to kill intruders.

How convenient that Ben has a lady on his side who owns a butcher shop with a nice, big refrigerator :-P

Anyone else think the part where Hurley broke down and started pouring his heart out about what really happened, was one of the all-time classic Lost scenes?

Okay, that last scene of the episode: the whole theme of "science versus faith", instead of a dichotomy, that seemed to be a convergence of the two. Desmond's mysterious "time lady" is a monk doing equations dealing with space/time in a church. I can't put my finger on quite what it is, but that one scene, I'd be willing to wager, perfectly set the tone for what we should expect from this season.

Just... wow. I'm gonna have to watch that again.

Read More

BulletFlight for iPod touch is a killer app... literally!

This has gotta be one of the most innovative and clever uses for the iPod touch that I've ever seen...

The BulletFlight application software, available through the iTunes store, turns the iPod touch into a full-blown ballistics computer that helps hunters in the field plot their firing solution. Users can tap in the ammunition type, wind speed and conditions, and distance to target. Profiles for three weapons come loaded with BulletFlight, although more can also be added.

Maybe Apple should look into this concept further. I mean, wouldn't it be nifty if we could own an iGun? :-P

Read More

LOST: Season 5 of television's best drama begins tonight

The penultimate season of Lost, regarded by many as the finest drama that the television medium has ever produced, begins tonight at 8 p.m. on ABC. The network has devoted the entire three hours of prime time to Lost, the bulk of which will be the two-hour season premiere, "Because You Left".

The finale of Season 4 left Lost fans with rattled senses. We saw how the Oceanic Six made it back to civilization. But now Jack and his fellow passengers have to get back to the island... which is easier said than done ever since Ben turned that cryptic frozen wheel and moved the entire island to God knows where (and if Ben is telling the truth, not even God knows where the island is). And then there's the little matter of Jack and Ben having to bring the corpse of "Jeremy Bentham" along with them...

As always, I'll post some thoughts about the episode afterward. And if you haven't already, get your DHARMA Initiative munchies ready 'cuz Lost is BACK! :-)

Read More