Well like I wrote about this afternoon, a few minutes ago "Weird Al" Yankovic posted the first single from his new album Straight Outta Lynwood on on his Myspace page. And ironically it's titled "Don't Download This Song". It's HILARIOUS!! And wonder of wonders: I was the very first fan to post on Al's Myspace page that I was listening to it!! Don't believe it? Here's the link to where's it at on his comments page (must be logged-in to Myspace to see it). It's the entry dated Aug 21, 2006 5:59 PM where I say '"Don't Download This Song" listening now!!!' Is that cool or what? :-)
Monday, August 21, 2006
Joe Rosenthal passes away: WWII photographer shot most famous image of the war
On February 23rd, 1945, after four days of fighting on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima, United States Marines from the 28th Regiment of the Fifth Division took the high ground on Mount Suribachi. There had been a flag-raising atop the hill earlier that day but it was then taken down because it was thought too small. A short while later six servicemen began raising a much larger flag. As they lifted the staff Joe Rosenthal, a photographer with the Associated Press who had been attached to the American forces as a field correspondent, snapped the following photograph:
It's being reported this afternoon that Joe Rosenthal has died at the age of 94. His photo of the raising of the flag atop Suribachi on Iwo Jima will forever be regarded as the most well-known image ever taken during the long conflict of World War II.
TONIGHT: First single from new Weird Al CD will be ANOTHER free download!
It was announced about two weeks ago that tonight "Weird Al" Yankovic will release the first single from his new upcoming album Straight Outta Lynwood on his official Myspace page. The upload is scheduled for 6 p.m. Pacific/9 p.m. Eastern and yes, it will be another free MP3 download like he did with "You're Pitiful" a few months ago. No idea which song from the CD this is going to be but rumor is that this might be "White and Nerdy": Weird Al's parody of Chamillionaire's "Ridin'". My guess is that it might be one of his new originals and that it'll be a style parody (his "Wanna B Ur Lover" from his last album Poodle Hat was a dead-on Prince-style spoof and was one of the most risque things Al's ever done). But there's also supposed to be parodies of Green Day, Usher, R. Kelly and Taylor Hicks on this thing, so I guess anything's possible tonight. I'll make an update to this post later on tonight after I've had a chance to listen to the new song.
UPDATE 10:14 PM EST: I've listened to "Don't Download This Song" probably a dozen times now since it appeared online a little over an hour ago and it just keeps getting funnier and funnier! I would say it's definitely a style parody along the lines of "We Are The World": it's not hard at all envisioning dozens of recording artists getting together and singing this. So go be a hypocrite and download "Don't Download This Song" from Al's Myspace page. Do it. Do it now now now!!
And the news just keeps getting better: the video for "Don't Download This Song" is going to premiere on Yahoo! Music Videos two days from now!
Oh yeah, and I wound up being the very first fan to listen to the song and comment about it on Al's Myspace page, too :-)
Campaign issues: The theory of "Intelligent Design"
On the website for my school board campaign there's a page called "Qualities and Qualifications". Up 'til earlier today on the part where I talk about being a Christian - which I believe anyone who's considering voting for me should bear in mind before they cast their ballot - there was a brief blurb about "intelligent design" theory. I had written this:
"... I have issues with the teaching of "intelligent design" in the public schools. If anyone wonders about why that is, write me an e-mail and I'll explain as best I know how."I removed that small bit earlier today, because I had started to feel like it didn't really adequately address my beliefs well at all. Well, earlier this evening (okay, it's past midnight as I write this right now so this'll be late yesterday) a gentleman wrote me and asked for some elaboration. I gave it to him, as best I knew how. And it sort of confirmed something that had been growing in my mind all day long: that I should provide more about my beliefs on "intelligent design" (i.e. teaching the theory of creationism per the Judeo-Christian model in public schools) on my website.
Well, there's a brief (for me anyway) capsule synopsis of my stance on intelligent design on the Issues page of the site. But just for sake of further clarity, I thought it might be a good idea to post the entirety of what I wrote this gentleman here on my blog, and invite any questions of comments about it from my readers (all three or four of them :-)
That said, here it goes...
My beliefs on teaching "Intelligent Design" in public schoolsOkay, if I write anymore I'll risk once again being referred to as a "wordy wordy monkey". Feel free to discuss or write me or whatever :-)I believe that God created the world. As a Christian, as someone who's studied science for most of my life, as a historian who's made biblical history a major part of my personal research, and for a lot of reasons I hold to the Judeo-Christian belief that we are not here by accident. I believe we are here for a purpose. And that purpose is established by Someone higher and greater than we are.
Now, about "intelligent design". Which I've pretty much stated that I *do* believe in an intelligent design to the universe already...
If we are to teach intelligent design in the science classroom, we should also be prepared to teach evolution as well, because each of them, in the strictest scientific definition of the term, is considered a theory. You and I believe that God established this world... but that's not something that is absolutely testable and verifiable by scientific experimentation. Neither for that matter is evolution (and I would be the first to point out in a science class that an increasing number of scientists are now saying that Darwin's theory of evolution is a very bad theory according to everything we now know about biology and genetics). Both "intelligent design" and "evolution" are ideas that must be accepted by faith on the part of the individual. And that's not something that we can or even should attempt to use the powers of the temporal realm in forcing another person into accepting: he or she must choose for himself, or herself, what it is they believe about how it is we came about.
I do not believe in the slightest bit that evolution is the answer to how we got here. In fact, it takes *more* faith to hold to the evolutionary model of things than it does for the creation model. But in terms of what materials we have with which to observe and make quantifiable measurements from, neither are concepts that we can either prove or disprove. Again, both come down to being things held by faith. Thus, if we are to discuss "intelligent design" (which I have no personal belief against) as a theory in the classroom, we should also be ready to discuss evolution as a theory also. And any other theory that someone might hold to (including panspermia, as much as I've always thought that was the most ridiculous theory ever postulated).
So how do we teach how it is that we got here, from both the physical and biological perspectives? The short answer is: we don't. And we don't pretend to have an answer for that either. What we *can* do as educators is admit to our students that there are several theories regarding how existence came to be and how we are where we are today. In that context, a teacher absolutely *CAN* discuss his/her personal beliefs on the subject, including if he/she believes in intelligent design (as a matter of fact, every teacher I had in a science class who did discuss his/her personal beliefs admitted that they *did* believe in creationism). If the opportunity arose in the classroom, I would certainly admit that I believe that there is a created structure to the universe that was put in place by God.
Here is the root of my personal problem with "intelligent design" in the classroom. It's not really about the theory at all, because I am a creationist. But it's how it has come to be used and pursued in many jurisdictions across the country. Instead of being something to be promoted as a legitimate theory in opposition of evolution for the students to consider, it has become a weapon to be wielded against those whose beliefs deviate from that of the Judeo-Christian mindset. All too often, the battles fought in our school systems are not about giving our students the best education possible, but rather they are about coming to possess a power over those students. As a Christian, I believe that using "intelligent design" in this context can do nothing other than corrupt unto self-destruction the testimony we are called to have of Christ. Having power over others - in the slightest bit - is not what we are called to do as ambassadors of Christ in this world. So I think in some ways how intelligent design is used has become something of a trap that diminishes us and our mission here.
We are here to convince those outside of Christ by virtue of our character and our humility. Lacking the desire for temporal power is something that markedly separates us from the rest of the world. Having that kind of peace without feeling we must possess power to keep it is something that all too many people in this world are craving in their own lives.
That is why I am suspicious of the promotion of "intelligent design" in our classrooms. Not because I disagree with the theory (as I've said, I do believe in creationism). But far more so, I fear what can and has been done with this theory in the name of God, but in reality has been for the glory of mere men.
This is something I've thought long and hard about, in the event that were to I win election to school board. I can not be a board member and proclaim that my beliefs in creationism are something that must be adhered to by the students of Rockingham County without question, because that would just be me serving my own interests. But I can be a presence on the board suggesting that in teaching science, if we absolutely must discuss the origins of existence then we *should* present "intelligent design" as as theory as viable as evolution.
It's complicated, I know. And what I've shared with you probably isn't half of my complete thoughts on the subect. In coming to my conclusions I really have sought to honor God and present Him as best I can possibly witness for Him to a very secular world.
But in a nutshell: it would be best not to speculate on how we got here, because we can't go back and observe how that came to be. Science can only show us how to observe the here and now. If discusson compels it, intelligent design should be presented but we also must accept that evolution can and will be presented also. We can admit to what we believe in regarding the subject but it's not given to us to compel our students to believe likewise. Rather we should do what we can to encourage them to come to their own beliefs on the subject... even if the answers for those questions can only be found in spirituality. And if we are to present intelligent design in the classroom, we - and I mean the Christians who would be given such authority - must resist the temptation to use it according to our will and understanding, rather than God's.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Plight of the Bumblebee: the 'bots in TRANSFORMERS announced
Back in May I posted my list of which Autobots and Decepticons should be in the live-action Transformers movie due out next July. Well this past Friday the writers of the movie did an online "press conference". And considering that they're making some departures from "old school" Generation 1 Transformers, the Autobots and Decepticons we'll be seeing are pretty close to what I'd called for. From the Autobots we'll be getting Optimus Prime (who'll be sporting some HIDEOUS flame decals on his truck form), Bumblebee (depicted in robot form at left), Jazz, Ratchet, and Ironhide. The Decepticons will be represented by Megatron, Starscream, Brawl, Bonecrusher, Barricade, Scorponok, Frenzy, and Blackout. A lot of fans are outraged that Soundwave will not be one of the Decepticons, but I can sort of understand it: when the first Transformers came out in 1984, Soundwave was one of the most popular Decepticons... but he transformed into a tape deck. How many times do you see someone carrying around a tape deck anymore as opposed to a CD player or an iPod? Actually, there's an idea: Ravage or Rumble could turn into an MP3 player. And sorry all of you who were hoping we'd see a "gestalt" robot like Devastator: although Bonerusher has traditionally been a Constructicon, there's no mention of the five other 'Cons with which he combines to form the massive robot with.But who knows: maybe if sequels are made we'll get to see a lot more Autobots and Decepticons. Maybe one of them will be Grimlock so his fanbase (who are some of the scariest Transformers fans I've ever known) will be happy. And I'd love to see Astrotrain or Blitzwing, if nothing else than to see how a robot that transforms into two vehicles translates on-screen.
"Take me out to the ballgame..."
This past Friday night Lisa and I did something that I haven't done in over twenty years: we went to a real live baseball game. It was the Greensboro Grasshoppers at home in First Horizon Park against the Lexington Legends.
And we had a really darned good time! The staff at the park really went all-out to give the eight-thousand-some in attendance some lively entertainment. One of the highlights of the night was the newest addition to the Grasshoppers team: Miss Babe Ruth, an 8-month old black Labrador Retriever who just start work as the team's "bat girl": she's trained to pick up the bats that the Grasshoppers use. After the game she ran through all four bases and then, ummmm... provided some other "entertainment" (well she's just a puppy after all :-P ) After the Grashoppers beat the Legends 9-3, there was a fireworks show launched from deep center field... and one of the better shows that I've seen at that. I ate two hot dogs with plenty of mustard while we were there and the food is pretty delicious too. It's all enough to make me wish I'd gone to a Grasshoppers game already in the two years that they've been playing in Greensboro. I'm really looking forward to going again sometime.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Once again, sensationalism overwhelms in Ramsey case
It was about 5 this afternoon that we got word at the station that there had finally been an arrest in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case. We wound up going to breaking news around 5:30 and that's practically all that was talked about for the next 45 minutes.
I guess maybe local interest (I'm writing from north-central North Carolina in case anyone's ever wondered where I am geographically) in the Ramsey case has something to do with the Short family murders, which happened four years ago this week. To this day, the killer of nine-year old Jennifer Short has not been found and there seem to be very few leads in the case. JonBenet Ramsey was murdered almost ten years ago... so I guess there is kind of a hope in these parts that if there has been a substantial break in that case after so long, that we might see justice meted out somewhere along the line on whoever it is that killed Jennifer and her two parents. I can pretty well understand that.
But I've never understood the sensationalism that has surrounded the Ramsey case from the very beginning. It's something that I've always believed has hampered the legitimate investigation into the crime. It doesn't matter who her parents were or that she was a beauty contestant, or anything else like that. At the risk of coming across as sounding cold and callous: this was just another murder case. And it should have been approached as any other murder case is supposed to be: with solemnity and seriousness of mind. But from day one this has been like chum thrown to the sharks of a headline-hungry media. It's been treated like a daytime soap-opera storyline far too much. And it's something that no doubt has prevented this case from making any significant progress until today's developments.
This isn't the first time this has happened by far. We saw it happen in the O.J. Simpson case over ten years ago. In our grandparents' day it was the Lindbergh kidnapping case of 1932: to this day there is grave questioning as to whether Bruno Hauptmann really went to the electric chair a guilty man. If cooler heads had prevailed among the press - and fame-happy prosecutors - the real murderers might actually have been found in the course of due process. But that didn't happen... or was allowed to happen at all.
So I'm glad that, apparently, there may have been a real break in the Ramsey case and a prime suspect has been found. We might have finally taken a major step toward seeing JonBenet's killer brought to justice. I just can't help but think that it could have come an awful lot sooner than now. And I wonder now just what the press is going to do this time now that it's got a second wind.
This week's sign that the Apocalypse is upon us...
I want a Mac.
That is the very first time in my life that I've found myself lusting after one of Apple's computers. And after going so long calling them "Macin-craps" too. But, it's true: I would love to have a Mac computer.
Now, I am and always will be, I guess, a Windows user. Ever since Windows 3.1 well over ten years ago. For me, it's just plain fun to get into the guts of Windows and tinker with stuff, the way we used to edit AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files in old-school MS-DOS. And it's just too practical for me to stick with Windows anyway. It's what I know how to use the most.
But in spite of all that, at long last... I'd love to own a Mac. Because as good as Windows is, there are some things that Mac can do just as well. And I'll now admit, maybe even better.
What finally did it for me is Garageband, a Mac program that lets even music-illiterate types like me make some pretty astounding audio tracks. We have Garageband loaded on a G5 Mac at our TV station and I'm really impressed with it. So much so that for the past few weeks I've been trying my darndest to find a Windows equivalent that does the same thing.
But alas... there isn't one.
And Macs also run Final Cut Pro, which I'm amazed at what some of the other guys at the station can do with this software package. When I was putting Forcery together I used Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 for the editing and After Effects 6.5 for all the visual effects. If I'd been working on a Mac loaded with Final Cut Pro, I could have streamlined the entire process so much more smoothly.
I'm starting to seriously consider eventually getting a Mac, because if I'm going to pursue filmmaking any more it might be well worth getting a multimedia platform as well-suited to so many production tasks as the Mac is. I can see where it would make a huge impact on my work.
If my friend Deborah ever reads this she's going to be laughing her head off, because she's long been telling me how good Macs are... and I've finally come to believe her.
So that might be something I'll be looking into getting in the not too distant future. And I'm sure it will work just fine alongside my Windows XP machines, or Vista if Microsoft ever gets that piece of bloatware off the ground. That's one thing I've always admired about Macs though: they don't have the excess baggage that every new iteration of Windows seems to bring with it. Sometimes less is more.
Okay, I've made my confession. Now it's time for me to go to work and do penance at the iMac that holds all of our station's TV commercials :-P
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
50,000
A few minutes ago I went to this blog to check on something and noticed the meter...
Monday, August 14, 2006
U.S. government sends Blade Runners to look for Replicants at Knoxville airport
Don't you just hate it when real life starts to imitate the movie Blade Runner too much?
Here's the story from the Wall Street Journal:
Which Travelers Have 'Hostile Intent'? Biometric Device May Have the AnswerHow is this not the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner?! Here's the user's end of the machine:
By JONATHAN KARP and LAURA MECKLER
August 14, 2006At airport security checkpoints in Knoxville, Tenn. this summer, scores of departing passengers were chosen to step behind a curtain, sit in a metallic oval booth and don headphones.
With one hand inserted into a sensor that monitors physical responses, the travelers used the other hand to answer questions on a touch screen about their plans. A machine measured biometric responses -- blood pressure, pulse and sweat levels -- that then were analyzed by software. The idea was to ferret out U.S. officials who were carrying out carefully constructed but make-believe terrorist missions.
The trial of the Israeli-developed system represents an effort by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to determine whether technology can spot passengers who have "hostile intent." In effect, the screening system attempts to mechanize Israel's vaunted airport-security process by using algorithms, artificial-intelligence software and polygraph principles.
Neither the TSA nor Suspect Detection Systems Ltd., the Israeli company, will discuss the Knoxville trial, whose primary goal was to uncover the designated bad guys, not to identify threats among real travelers. They won't even say what questions were asked of travelers, though the system is generally designed to measure physical responses to hot-button questions like "Are you planning to immigrate illegally?" or "Are you smuggling drugs."
(snip)
The Voight-Kampff is a polygraph-like machine used by the LAPD's Blade Runner units to assist in the testing of an individual to see if he or she is a replicant. It measures bodily functions such as respiration, "blush response", heart rate and eye movement in response to emotionally provocative questions. In the film two replicants take the test: Leon (played by Brion James) and Rachael (played by Sean Young). In Blade Runner, Deckard tells Tyrell that it usually takes 20 to 30 cross-referenced questions to distinguish a replicant. With Rachael it takes more than a hundred.There's no word yet on how many "skinjobs" have been nabbed in Knoxville so far.Description from the original 1982 Blade Runner presskit:
"A very advanced form of lie detector that measures contractions of the iris muscle and the presence of invisible airborne particles emitted from the body. The bellows were designed for the latter function and give the machine the menacing air of a sinister insect. The VK is used primarily by Blade Runners to determine if a suspect is truly human by measuring the degree of his empathic response through carefully worded questions and statements."
Peter the YouTuber gaining a devoted following
A few days ago I posted a YouTube video featuring a 70-ish man making some "geriatric gripes and grumbles". Well in the past week or so since that first video, which he titled "first try", Peter - aka "geriatric1927" - has gained a massive following especially from the younger crowd that dominates YouTube. He's now posted eight videos of himself so far. He talks about growing up before World War II, entering the British armed forces as a radar mechanic, meeting and marrying his wife, his lifelong love of motorcycles, the passion for blues music that he shares with his audience... he's definitely one of a kind in the world of Web 2.0. Here's one news story I found about him and here's yet another. I'm highly recommending checking this guy out if you haven't already.Sunday, August 13, 2006
"I want to ride my bicycle..."
So... I got a new bicycle.
Lisa and I spent the past few weeks looking for one (although the extreme heat we've had lately put a damper on that for awhile). She brought her bike with her a few weeks ago when she came back from visiting her parents in Georgia. And there's a great bicycle/jogging trail that goes by our place. So of course being a good young married couple that does everything together, she made me get one too so we could go ridin'.
We finally found a good one today at the Super K-Mart in Greensboro, made by Mongoose. So we went out for a "test drive" on the trail this evening after dinner. And I really need to figure out the gears on the thing 'cuz my legs got a way horrid workout going uphill the hard way. But I think this is going to prove to be a very wise investment in the long term. It's great exercise, and it's going to help me work toward a goal that my friend Chad has convinced me to go for: running a full marathon, like he's done twice now.
But that's a ways off still. I gotta train first and start a real running regimen like he's got. In the meantime, I'm trying to get "Bicycle Race" by Queen out of my head :-)
Friday, August 11, 2006
Report on my campaign: "I am NOT a committee!"
I've been thinking about making reports here whenever things warrant them, about my running for Rockingham County Board of Education. Not so much to toot my own horn but just to give other people who've never run for office an idea of what exactly is involved with trying to get elected. So far I've filed the paperwork to be on the ballot, sent out a press release, and created a website for my campaign.
This morning I filed the paperwork pertaining to my political campaign committee. By law I must have a committee with a treasurer, even though that committee and treasurer is actually just me. I shouldn't have to file any more stuff between now and the election, unless I somehow wind up spending/raising more than $3,000. In the meantime all I have to do is keep meticulous records of everything that gets raised or spent. Which so far the expenditure just a little over $65, the bulk of which was registering knightforboard.org as my website domain name.
So I needed to come up with a name for my committee. It had to be something unique. I tried to make it something both practical and memorable. I made attempts to find something that would turn into a neat acronym, but came up with nothing. For awhile I seriously thought of naming it "The Vote Knight for School Board Committee (There's No Real Committee)"... but this is a serious thing so I didn't do that.
In the end, I settled on Knight for School Board 2006 Committee. Just something plain and simple. And short enough to hopefully fit on one line at the bottom of the screen when I start doing the TV commercials.
Tune in next time, when Our Hero talks about the intricacies and hurdles that come with looking for contributions.
More DOCTOR WHO on Sci-Fi next month
The latest season of Doctor Who - the first with David Tennant as the Doctor - will start running on the Sci-Fi Channel on September 29th, according to the Chicago Tribune. That's about 8 months earlier than a lot of us were expecting Season 2 (or 28 if you're counting from old-school Who) to broadcast in America. No word though on whether "The Christmas Invasion", the first real episode with Tennant, will be part of the set. I hope it will be.
This season of Doctor Who was a real mixed bag: the episodes that were good were very good (like "The Girl in the Fireplace", "The Age of Steel" and "Doomsday") while the ones that were bad were absolutely atrocious: the final scene of "Love & Monsters" made that episode the single most disturbing/disgusting thing I might have ever seen on television. Well anyway, if you didn't end up downloading them off the 'net for the past few months, you'll get your chance to see the newest Doctor Who episodes starting next month and then you can judge for yourself :-)
Thursday, August 10, 2006
About the "no liquids rule" that was imposed on airline passengers today...
So now all liquid products are banned from carry-on luggage if you board a plane, except for baby formula and bottled breast milk. This is all because a major plot was foiled to blow up British airliners using liquid explosives.
Here's the thing: explosives don't have to be in liquid form. They can also be solid, like plastic explosives.
So if another mad scheme is stopped to blow up a plane, only this time using C4 plastique, will that mean that ALL plastic items - like combs and Game Boys and credit cards - will be banned from carry-ons from then on?
"POLICE SQUAD! In Color" and on DVD this November
Arriving this November 7th is one of the most hotly demanded DVD sets ever: Police Squad!, the complete six-episode series.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
My political campaign now has a website!
Awright, I spent all night working on this (mostly just writing stuff) but my first-ever political campaign now has its very own website! Head over to www.knightforboard.org to get the lowdown and more information about me than you'll ever want to know :-P
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Okay, WHO WANTS TO BE A SUPERHERO?
They're re-running last week's episode right now on Sci-Fi Channel. I don't usually go in for "reality" TV shows but I'm having too fun a time watching this one. In case you don't know, Who Wants To Be A Superhero? is a show where a dozen or so would-be costumed heroes compete - under the watchful eye of comics legend Stan Lee - for the ultimate prize: be a hero in a published comic book. See if you don't giggle a bit after hearing the names of some of these people: Major Victory, Monkey Woman, Iron Enforcer, Fat Momma (wearing donuts on her utility belt), Cell Phone Girl. The first week's big challenge was to change into costume without being gazed upon by onlookers, then run a short distance through an archway... and too many of the prospective heroes ignored the little girl crying for help on their way to the goal. This past week's involved being brave enough to withstand being assaulted by two vicious attack dogs (I'm still laughing at how they dragged Creature across the lawn). Is this thing contrived? Possibly. Is it watchable? Heck yes! Can't wait to see the next episode when the remaining heroes face their first supervillain.
Monday, August 07, 2006
First press release about my run for school board
This is the first press release to come out of my campaign to be elected to the Rockingham County Board of Education. It'll get faxed to all the local media today.
There's also going to be a website going up in the next few days that will have more of my take on some things.PRESS RELEASE
IMMEDIATE RELEASECHRISTOPHER KNIGHT ANNOUNCES CANDIDACY FOR SCHOOL BOARD August 7 2006
Christopher Knight has announced his candidacy for one of the at-large seats on the Rockingham County Board of Education after filing to run on August 3rd.
"I believe that I will bring a fresh and unique perspective to the Rockingham County school board," Knight said. "The realm of education is one that I have experienced much during my young life, from studying to be a teacher to actually running a classroom. I'm looking forward to contributing a new voice toward school policy-making."
At the top of Knight's list of priorities if elected to the school board is finding ways to reassert local control over Rockingham County schools. He cites the No Child Left Behind Act as an example of the federal government determined to micromanage local school systems. "There may not be much we can do at this level toward changing that legislation, but we can at least try to adapt ourselves around it," Knight said. "We are presently very much a system focused on outcome-based education because of the end-of-grade testing, and I believe that's wrong. We should encourage our teachers to be proactive instead of reactive." Knight also said that he is a firm believer in fiscal conservatism and is a supporter of such programs as the arts.
If elected, Knight has pledged to visit every school in the Rockingham County Consolidated School system and to meet with principals and teachers in order to listen to them and discuss how to improve county-wide education.
Knight is a freelance website designer and works part-time as a master control technician at WGSR-Star 39 in Reidsville. He is also the co-founder of KWerky Productions, a North Carolina-based film production company whose first major work, Forcery, gained rave reviews and has been shown in countries as far away as Norway and Argentina. Knight is a 1992 graduate of Rockingham County Senior High and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Historical Studies from Elon University. He is also an Eagle Scout and an assistant scoutmaster with Troop 797 in Reidsville. He has been married to his wife Lisa for four years. This is his first campaign for public office.
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Sunday, August 06, 2006
Dining at Kabuto Japanese Steakhouse
Last night I took Lisa out to something she's never been treated to before: a live performance by a chef in a Japanese steakhouse. We went to Kabuto Japanese Steakhouse in Greensboro: a place that I've heard of for at least twenty years now but had never actually gone to before. We had a few things worth celebrating so Friday I made reservations (highly recommended at Kabuto) and were taken to our seats at 6 on the dot... just before we were about to order some squid from the sushi bar.We were seated at one of those combination dinner table-and-stovetop along with several other people, and it wasn't long before our chef for the evening came out with his cart containing our dinners to be cooked before our very eyes. He squired something on top of the stove and lit it up with a match: flames burst out and threatened to burn us all... well that's what it looked like for a second or two anyway. The chef wasted no time preparing to cook while simultaneously entertaining us: one thing he did was arrange a sliced onion into a "mini-volcano" that spat out fire. He was also pretty quick with the jokes.
Well, Lisa had the ribeye with shrimp and I had the ribeye with chicken, along with generous helpings of rice and vegetables. For dessert our chef made sliced banana covered in a mix of brown sugar and cinnamon. The entire meal was delicious: I can still taste the bananas when I think about them.
Kabuto is a pretty reasonably priced place. Well worth checking out if you're in the Greensboro area and want to try a different dining experience sometime. We'll definitely be paying another visit to the place in the future.
Friday, August 04, 2006
ANNOUNCEMENT: I'm now a candidate for public office
Readers of my blog are the first people from the general public that are going to hear about this. The official announcement is going to come early next week: I'm still trying to figure out where I should hold the press conference.
I filed late yesterday morning. I am now officially on the ballot this coming November as a candidate for an at-large seat on the Rockingham County Board of Education. This is the first time that I've ever run for public office (Lord only knows if it'll be the last time too, but I'm gonna try for this).
You can find a complete list of filed candidates here. I'll be writing more about this in the next few days or so, including why I chose to run, what my beliefs are in regards to public education, and maybe a little about what to expect from my campaign committee (there's no real committee... it's just me but by law I have to have a campaign committee for the paperwork).
Awright, any questions? :-)
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Something I'm watching with considerable interest
According to the Israeli news service Haaretz, Muslims in Jerusalem are demanding that Jewish groups be kept off the Temple Mount today, the Ninth of Av on the Hebrew calendar.
What they're really trying to do is prevent the Temple Mount Faithful from coming anywhere near the Al Aqsa mosque - i.e. the "Dome of the Rock" - and do what they've set out to do for the past several years now: set about rebuilding the Jewish Temple.
Some years ago when I was a reporter I interviewed Gershon Salomon, the founder and leader of the Temple Mount Faithful. Ever since then I've kept my ears open to anything pertaining to him and the Temple Mount Faithful, especially when it comes to their attempts to approach the Temple Mount. Every time over the years when they've tried to come to the Mount to set the cornerstone of the temple, they have been foiled by their own government. This time the Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that anyone can visit the Mount on the Ninth of Av. I can see Salomon - by far one of the most extraordinary men I've ever met - girding up now with his fellow believers to make one more go at it.
You may want to watch this in the next few days, especially with what's going on right now between Israel and Hezbollah. Particularly with Ehud Olmert at the helm in Israel. Who knows... but this may finally be the year when the Temple Mount Faithful are able to begin rebuilding the temple.
All hell will break loose like Jerusalem hasn't seen before if they try to do it.
I say, let 'em build. It's their land anyway. The Muslims didn't even care that much for the site until Israel was established in 1948 anyway, then it became "sacred" to them.
By the way, Gershon Salomon obliged me with an autograph. Would be neat to know someday that I have the signature of the man who led the effort to build the third Jewish temple.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
KWerky Production update at the front end of August
Well, we tried. Honestly, we did. But in the end there was no way we could really get The Charles Schulz Code done. The biggest obstacle was that we couldn't find anyplace suitable to be where we would shoot the art gallery scenes, which were crucial (and demanded some unique specifications). The real hurdle though was how bad The Da Vinci Code bombed at the box office, at least in terms of all the hype that it had generated before it even came out. This was supposed to be a $300 million monster blockbuster right out the gate - something like the newest Pirates of the Caribbean - when instead it creaked its way toward, I think it's something around $200 million after all these months, or maybe less. And general interest in the whole Da Vinci Code thing is finally beginning to wane bigtime. A few years from now a lot of people who bought this book will be asking themselves why did they even bother to pick it up in the first place. However it is, it ended up just not being that good a material for a satire like I was aiming for. Maybe I'll post the script for it sometime though, to let anyone who might be interested see what was going to happen.
Meanwhile, work continues on other projects. And I'll post more about those as they develop.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
What I think about the whole Israel/Lebanon mess
Tonight I was on the phone with a friend, and he asked me what I thought about what's going on right now between Israel and the Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. It was the first time that I gave some ventilation to what's been going through my head about this ever since it started... what... three weeks ago?
In the past month or so I haven't posted that much "serious" stuff on this blog. Not like I usually do. There's a lot of reasons for that. I've been thinking deeply on a lot of subjects lately and rather than blab about them on the fly here, I've been letting them percolate more. In the meantime this blog seems to have become about nothing else other than entertainment and minor trivia. Now it's starting to shift back to "real world" stuff.
So, what do I think about this mess in Lebanon right now? I don't believe the United States should become involved in it whatsoever, because this has become a conflict with bad guys but no real good guys either. Yes, Israel has the right to defend itself against those that have actively been trying to destroy her... but that does not mean that Israel has to stoop to the level of killing innocent civilians wholesale in order to get to those bad guys. So of course our "brilliant" leadership is practically giving its blessing to Israel to keep putting innocent Lebanese in the line of fire.
Think about it: would the United States government be in the right, at all, if it supported Great Britain if that country began to carelessly slaughter Irish women and children just to get back at a handful of IRA members?
And this may mark me as a strange Christian, but I can't honestly say that I support the state of Israel as many of my brethren do. Yes, we are instructed in the Bible to honor our Jewish forefathers and to pray for the peace of Jerusalem... but nowhere is it written that we are to thoughtlessly acquiesce to whatever the government of Israel chooses to do. There is a difference between the Jewish people and the government of the Jewish people in their own homeland, just as there is a difference between the American people and the government of the United States: one is not necessarily representative of the other.
So no, I don't completely support the Israeli government in this. And I believe that too many Christians should reconsider why it is that they are blindly supporting that government. No government is that perfect and let's face it: the Old Testament is 60% - or more - about times where the then-Israeli government botched things up. Why should we expect any greater from its present-day incarnation?
So chalk me up as someone who thinks that Hezbollah should be ended as a threat... but also thinks that Israel is fast destroying - if it hasn't completely done so already - its moral credibility in this matter.
Iraq war vets suffering mentally, study finds
This is what I've feared most during the past three years: the long-term effects of the war in Iraq on our returning military personnel. According to the results of a new study, veterans of Iraq suffer feelings of confusion and even mental lapses at a rather common rate.
I'm afraid to say this, but I expect the suicide rate among those returning from this ill-conceived conflict will rise markedly in the years to come. Especially after President Bush leaves office and whoever is next finally starts to withdraw our soldiers... then it'll finally start to be asked by practically everyone just what were we doing there in the first place. Realizing that one fought in and suffered for a meaningless war is going to pack an emotional whallop, no doubt.
From the creative mind of George Lucas...
George Lucas really hasn't released that many movies over the years when you think about it. So when one of his greatest triumphs ever reaches a milestone it's a fitting thing to commemorate it. It was twenty years ago today - August 1st, 1986 - that Howard the Duck was hatched in theaters. Yes the summer of 1986 gave us many great cinema classics - Aliens, Transformers: The Movie, etc. - but Howard the Duck certainly stands out as... well, something. Anyway, happy 20th birthday Howard!
Monday, July 24, 2006
I kept waiting for somebody to slap her good
Last week I did something that, in all my thirty-some years of being a southerner, I'd never done before: watched the entire movie Gone With The Wind.
What did I think of it? I thought it was one of the best period pieces I've ever seen. But it got to the point where I was just waiting for somebody, anybody, to slap the heck out of Scarlett O'Hara. She was way too hung up on Ashley Wilkes for her own good and it cost her everything: in the end she's this poor delusioned woman clinging to vague hope that it'll all be somehow better. In a way I can kind of empathize with her though: she didn't want to be alone in this world... but to resolve that she tried to have something that wasn't meant to be hers at all.
Anyway, it's a pretty good movie, even if it's soooooo long. I don't know if I'd ever watch it again but at least now I've cinematically lived up to my southern heritage.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Weird Al's coming STRAIGHT OUTTA LYNWOOD on September 26
After a week of tantalizing teasers, yesterday "Weird Al" Yankovic revealed the title and full cover artwork for his newest album. Straight Outta Lynwood arrives in stores on September 26th. Here's what it'll look like:
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Four years ago today...
...I became the happiest man on the face of the earth.
Happy Anniversary, my dear Lisa :-)
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
"Game over man, game over!"
A little bit of cinema history: it was twenty years ago today - July 18th, 1986 - that the movie Aliens debuted.
Monday, July 17, 2006
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST review
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is one of those movies that just gets better and better the more I think about it, now four days after Lisa and I watched it at a theater in Newport News, Virginia. It was a really neat movie experience to wrap up what was a terrific - if completely unplanned - vacation. Now with some time behind me that was spent on "digesting it all in, I feel like commenting on it.Let me go ahead and state something that everyone else seems to be saying: this movie is a lot like The Empire Strikes Back (Philip Arthur makes note of many similarities in his review of Dead Man's Chest). But it's like a lot of other movies too. I thought the ending seemed very much like The Matrix Reloaded and maybe I'm the only one seeing this but the East India Trading Company as its depicted in Dead Man's Chest seems an awful lot like Weyland-Yutani - otherwise just known as "the Company" - from the Alien movies. But there's nothing wrong with any of that. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a smart amalgam of plenty of classic elements and story devices... and as the first half of a two-part story, it's just about perfect.
When we last saw young Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann (Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, respectively) had just helped pull off an escape for Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). Dead Man's Chest opens with the repercussions of their aiding and abetting the scoundrel, as they are arrested - on their wedding day no less - on orders from Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), who represents the East India Trading Company (and who it's strongly implied had a run-in of some kind with Captain Sparrow years earlier). Beckett is willing to cut a deal with Will: steal Sparrow's seemingly-broken compass and he'll let them go free... but fail to get the compass and Elizabeth will "dance the Tyburn jig" from the hangman's gallows.
It's around this time that Captain Jack Sparrow - the hub around which everything else revolves around in this movie in one way or another - is brought into the picture. Remember how Sparrow makes his first appearance in The Curse of the Black Pearl? Well, his first moments of screentime in Dead Man's Chest are just as memorable and perfectly true to his outrageous character. Onboard the Black Pearl Sparrow has a spectral visitor: Bootstrap Bill Turner (Stellan Skarsgård) has come to tell Sparrow that it's almost time to make good on a debt he owess to none other than Davy Jones. So it is that the events are set up: Will Turner is going after Sparrow, while Sparrow is desperately trying to escape his fate, and it's not long afterward that Elizabeth is going after both of them. And above it all lurks the tragic story of the devil-of-the-sea himself, Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and the mysterious chest that is about to become sought by all.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is foremost a movie intended to give fans of the first film what they've wanted most: more Captain Jack Sparrow! From beginning to end, everything that happens in this movie does so as a ripple from the presence of Sparrow landing in the pool. Johnny Depp is obviously having fun with this character. This may be the portrayal that he'll forever be known for, as much as Sylvester Stallone is known as Rocky or Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker. I'm of the mind that Captain Jack Sparrow is one of the few wholeheartedly original characters that movies have given us in the past several years. If you enjoyed him in The Curse of the Black Pearl you'll love him even more here and if you've already seen Dead Man's Chest, it's only another ten months before we arrive at World's End and get more.
Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are fine in this movie, as are the others that have returned from the first movie (including Pintel and one-eyed Ragetti, who is trying to study-up on the Bible since he's now mortal). We are also introduced to several new characters, including the Voodoo priestess Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris).
But the real standout of this movie, apart from Depp's Captain Jack, is Davy Jones and everything associated with him: his ship, his crew of the damned, and the man/thing himself. Jones is a completely computer-generated character and for the first time in five years, at least since before WETA ran away with the artform with Gollum and the rest of their stuff in The Lord of the Rings, Industrial Light and Magic are back on the ball with digital animation. My biggest complaint with ILM's CGI work has been that their stuff has looked too "shiny and new". In Dead Man's Chest they've finally learned to get away from that look. Davy Jones looks frickin' real, in a way that ILM has never done anything before. WETA's Gollum set the benchmark for what's to be expected from CGI and now ILM has more than surpassed that goal. As for the Kraken... well, the least said about it to the uninitiated, the better.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is pure fun with a bag of popcorn and hopefully someone to share the experience with. It's not a completely perfect movie (there seems to be too long a lull in the action in the second half, but remember this is just part one of a two-part story) but it's a great summer flick that from the start of the closing credits will have you hungering for the next installment. Highly recommendable.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Pictures from our Hampton/Virginia Beach/Norfolk/Newport News excursion
Lisa took a lot more pictures with her film camera that I'll probably be adding on to these eventually, but here's a look at some of the stuff we did this past week after arriving in Hampton, Virginia:
U.S. Navy aircraft carriers docked at Norfolk
U.S. Navy aircraft carriers docked at Norfolk
Another Navy ship berthed in Norfolk (we caught this pic on our way back home.)
Here's Lisa later that night, on the "boardwalk" of a beach in Hampton:
The next day we visited Yorktown, where British forces under General Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington, thus ending major fighting in the Revolutionary War. Here I am standing with the victory monument in the background:
And also at Yorktown, here is the "Poor Potter's" kiln and earthworks... which actually turns out to have been the first major pottery operation of its kind in colonial America (linked image is larger so you can see the detail of the archeological work done at the site):
The next day (Thursday) we visited the Virginia Air and Space Museum (which also has an IMAX screen showing Superman Returns in 3D, but we didn't watch that again). Here's me standing in front of the command module from the Apollo 12 lunar mission:
And, that's basically our trip in a nutshell. We had such a great time that we're planning on going back in the fall when its cooler, and then take in such sites as Colonial Williamsburg and the Jamestown settlement.
Look for pics from Lisa either here or on her own blog soon :-)
Friday, July 14, 2006
Return from the land of a thousand 7-Elevens
Lisa and I pulled back into home about 2:30 this afternoon, four days after taking off with no idea whatsoever where we were headed. All we knew was that we were going to head out of town and we didn't care where that put us. And I think the original plan was to try and make it at least as far as New Jersey and maybe take a quick jaunt into New York City. But in the end, Monday evening saw us marginally lost in Virginia Beach, headed up I-64 to Hampton, where we stayed until leaving this morning. And given our lack of planning, we had a heck of a trip! Tuesday I got to do something that I've wanted to do for years: drive across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, all 17+ miles of it over and under water then turned around and made the return trip (cost seventeen bucks to do it but I thought it was worth it). Lisa and I got to play in the surf at Hampton and Virginia Beach (finally using the boogie board we bought at the Outer Banks three years ago) and on Wednesday visited the site of the Battle of Yorktown, then took Colonial Parkway past Colonial Williamsburg and the site of the Jamestown settlement (will have pics of those up soon hopefully). Then yesterday made a visit to the Virginia Air and Space Museum and caught Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest at a theater in Newport News.
Yeah, darned good trip! But what I can't figure out for the life of me is why are there so many 7-Elevens in the Virginia Beach/Norfolk/Hampton area? I swear, there were three located within about two blocks of each other at one spot in Virginia Beach. We didn't visit any but they were plenty ubiquitous enough.
Anyhoo, that's where we were for the past several days. We may visit the area again sometime this fall.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Eye-MAXed out on SUPERMAN RETURNS
So we show them the tickets, they gave us these funky 3D glasses with some kind of polarized lenses (not the blue/red 3D that were big in the Fifties) and we got some good seats for the show. After a short intro about what IMAX is (the screen at Exploris is about five stories tall, with 44 speakers pumping out 12,000 watts of sound) and how to use the glasses (put them on when the green glasses flash at the bottom of the screen, take them off when the flashing glasses are red) and then some trailers - all in 3D - for movies like The Ant Bully and Happy Feet (why couldn't there have been a 3D trailer for Spider-Man 3?) the show started.
And it was terrific! This was the second feature film that I'd seen in IMAX (the first was The Matrix Reloaded three years ago) and it was nothing short of spectacular. Not every movie can have the honor of being IMAXed, but the epic scale of Superman Returns absolutely demands it. I've written my review of the movie after watching it a week ago so I won't go much into the movie itself, but seeing the movie THAT big no doubt maxed-out the irises of everyone looking at the screen.
Yes, Superman Returns in IMAX 3D was a beautiful thing to behold... but only 20 minutes of the movie is in 3D! Those include Clark's remembering when he first learned he could fly, the rescue of the space shuttle and the 777 jetliner, some of when Lex is "growing" his new continent (STILL the dumbest criminal plot in a movie ever) and the final scenes showing Superman flying toward the sunrise (like how Christopher Reeve did it in his movies). There were PLENTY of other scenes that could have been 3D-ized, like Superman and Lois's first reunion, the part where Luthor enters the Fortress of Solitude, even Superman's return to Earth... THAT would have been spectacular! But I guess it must have been too expensive to convert the entire film over to 3D... and IMAX 3D at that. Still, Lisa and I both had the same sentiment: that we wished there had been more of it in the movie.
But anyway, all around it was a fine evening. Am glad we were able to catch it and fairly close by to where we live, too. Well worth the higher cost over that of a regular movie ticket to see at least once.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
In 1996 we celebrated our INDEPENDENCE DAY
Today marks a pretty funny anniversary for me. You see, it was ten years ago yesterday – July 3rd, 1996 – that Independence Day premiered. Some theaters jumped the gun and had showings on the night of the 2nd, which is the date in the movie that all the action starts happening, but most people started seeing it on the 3rd and 4th. It was on July 4th that I saw it for the first time......and I liked it so much that I saw it six more times before the summer was out! Yeah, 1996 will forever be "the year that I saw Independence Day seven times in the theater" to me. The only other movies I saw that season were Twister (caught it three times) and A Time To Kill (just once). I've no idea why such madness overtook me in those lazy, hazy, crazy days ten years ago. It was a personal record that stood until I saw Star Wars Episode I nine times three years later. But it was still enough to merit making a post about it here in commemoration.
Ten years ago in 1996 my ebullient comrade "Weird" Ed was taking summer classes at Elon, and I was working a summer job at a bindery near Greensboro. We'd been given the 4th and 5th off – a Thursday and Friday – so I was gonna get a four-day weekend. Well, after work let out about 4 p.m. on the 3rd I drove to the Elon campus, picked up Ed and we made a quick stop at my Burlington apartment (I was living with my parents during the week that summer but staying at the apartment on weekends) where I got cleaned up and changed shirts. We then drove to my parents' house, dropped off Ed's gear there (and he became one of the very few people that our cocker spaniel Bridget never barked at... which shows how neat a guy Ed is 'cuz Bridget barked at just about EVERY stranger who came into the house) and then headed to King's Inn Pizza in Eden 'cuz I'd been telling Ed they have some of the best pizza anywhere. We stopped off at Wal-Mart (the original Eden one) on the way home and ogled some Star Wars figures and fireworks before heading back to the house and playing around on the Internet for the next three hours. See, Ed was spending the night at our place so we could be sure to get an early start on catching Independence Day before the theaters all got sold out the next day. Well, the next morning we woke up and got ready and headed out the door a little after 11 and went to the Janus Theater (which is no longer there) in Greensboro. We got tickets for a showing a little after 1 p.m. And we wound up getting pretty good seats too. And then the show started...
I think it's safe to say that we were "blown away" by Independence Day (often contracted to just ID4). We'd been stoked for this movie ever since the commercial that ran during Super Bowl XXX and all the trailers and television spots that had aired since. Well, Independence Day did not disappoint. It was everything a summer movie was supposed to be: a lot of cornball hokey fun blowing up stuff real good with a multi-million dollar special effects budget.
Don't fire your guns at flying saucers: you could trigger an interstellar war.
Well, we liked it so much that we decided to see it again a few days later on Sunday. Then I saw it again a week later with a friend from out-of-country. And I kept seeing it again and again and again. Here's how the final tally broke down:
Thursday, July 4th 1996 – 1st time, saw it with Ed at Janus Theater in GreensboroSunday, July 7th 1996 – 2nd time, saw it with Ed at Brassfield Theater in Greensboro
Sunday, July 14th 1996 – 3rd time, saw it with Benny – my good friend from Belgium – at the movie theater in Sylva, North Carolina
Saturday, July 20th 1996 – 4th time, saw it with Johnny Yow (who's been on me awhile now for not mentioning him on this blog so now I get to make that right with him) at Brassfield Theater in Greensboro, right after he told me that night that he'd proposed to his girlfriend/now-wife Della
Saturday, July 27th 1996 – 5th time, the only time that I went alone to see Independence Day in the theater, at the theater that used to be in Burlington, North Carolina before it was demolished to make way for a Lowe's hardware store
Saturday, August 10th 1996 – 6th time, saw it with Ed at the Brassfield (again)
Wednesday, August 21st 2006 – 7th and last time I saw Independence Day in the theater, with Ed and Gary, once again at the Janus
Well, my now-apparent obsession about Independence Day soon manifested itself for all the world to see. A few nights after seeing it for the second time I started work on an Independence Day webpage. HTML was something I'd started picking up about nine months earlier and I was eager to stretch my newfound skills to the limit. It began with a single crude black page with a graphic I made in Paint Shop Pro (this was all being done on a 486/25mhz machine running Windows 3.1 and using a 14.4 modem to upload to my web account on my college's server, mind ya). And it fast spiralled completely out of my control. I spent the next few nights after coming home from work scouring the Internet for new Independence Day graphics, sounds, anything I could cram onto my 170 MB hard drive. The page became two, then three and ultimately eight different pages on what was by that point a full-bore website. And thus, Chris Knight's Unofficial ID4 Homepage came into being. And my Independence Day homepage almost brought down Elon's web server because (a) in short order it became the biggest website hosted on Elon's server - larger than the school's official site even - growing to an unconscionable over sixty megabytes in size: most of those were all the sound files (in bulky WAV format, remember this was before the advent of MP3). And (b) it started racking up hits out the wazoo. It had received something well over 120,000 visits by the time I was forced to take it down about a year later.
They blew up Congress!
But even today, I'm still proud of my humble lil' ID4 homepage. It was the first thing I ever did online that garnered a lot of popularity, apparently. My site was linked to by just about all the other big fan-made sites (and I was more than glad to link to them in kind) and a lot of really sweet e-mails came in from all over the world. A few weeks after the site first went online I got the ultimate nod courtesy of an e-mail from none other than Independence Day producer Dean Devlin himself, congratulating me on having a great website about his movie (I've still got that e-mail somewhere too). And that was my first real contact with someone from the entertainment world that came about because of something I did in cyberspace. There've been many since then, but that e-mail from Devlin about the ID4 site I'd put up... well, there's not been anything quite like that since.
"And what the hell is that smell?!? AAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH... I could have been at a BARBECUE!!"
Today, looking back, I've no idea how come I went so mad for Independence Day that summer. Maybe it had something to do with how starved I was for good sci-fi escapism. Maybe it was because this was the first movie in a long time for me that honestly felt like a summer blockbuster: the last summer film of this kind of scale that I'd seen, Jurassic Park, really left me feeling wanting. Independence Day satiated my desire for a fun summer flick like nothing had in too long a while. Or maybe it was that for the first time in my life, I really let myself go to be overwhelmed by the hype of a blockbuster movie. That was the first time, and there haven't been many times since (I'm pretty pragmatic when it comes to accepting entertainment... or anything else for that matter) that I've found myself caught up in the hooplah (for the record, I still don't "get" all the fuss about Snakes On A Plane). Independence Day was mindless good fun and just for once it felt great to join in the revelry without caring about whether or not this movie made any sense at all.
"You don't actually think they spend twenty thousand dollars on a hammer, thirty thousand dollars on a toilet seat, do you?"
Yes, let's talk about making sense, 'cuz Independence Day just plum doesn't. The mistakes abound in this film (the very first time I saw it, I caught the error in the first scene of how the Apollo 11 plaque is planted amid some rocks when it was actually attached to the base of the lunar module). There are geographical gaffes all over (like putting the Empire State Building in the wrong part of New York City). The producers played fast and loose with real military protocol (a U.S. ballistic submarine doesn't usually operate in the Persian Gulf). There are fallacies upon fallacies in Independence Day... and at the top of the heap is how it is that an Apple Powerbook is somehow able to interface with alien technology and upload a computer virus into the mothership. Look, we're only now able to get Windows machines to talk to Macs with any sense of coherence... and they expect us to believe that a laptop computer is going to feed bogus data into the mainframe of an alien spaceship the size of a small moon?
"Die. Diiiiiieeeeeee..."
"Is that glass bullet-proof?!"
And, let's face it: the past ten years have made Independence Day a somewhat dated movie. The World Trade Center was destroyed, but it wasn't by the aliens. There is no more Republican Guard to be so desperately driven as to hook up with Israeli fighter pilots somewhere in the Iraqi desert. When production began on Independence Day the Internet was just then coming into its own: it would certainly figure into the scheme of things if a real-life alien invasion took place today. There're probably a dozen or more things in this movie that firmly establish it as a product of the mid-Nineties, instead of enhancing its quality as a timeless classic...
President Whitmore delivers The Speech.
...but even then, that is part of the appeal of Independence Day, I think. This is a movie that, at its heart, is about an America - and a world - that never was, but could have been... and might still be someday. At the time it came out I wrote somewhere that Independence Day was the most politically-incorrect big-budget movie to come out in quite some time. When I wrote that I did so with what was then a very limited perspective of ideologies. In my mind back then, Independence Day was a movie that reflected a damned good light on the United States military (something taboo to "liberals", I understood then) but even back then I realized something about this film: that Independence Day is a movie where average people come together to do the impossible. And they're not divided up along racial or class lines either. Fercryingoutloud, that's Steve and David who fly up together into that mothership to save the world... and not once does anyone bring up that they happen to be a black man and a Jew. In too many other movies that would be something that would be harped upon somehow... but it never comes up in Independence Day.
Why can't real life be like that? Why can't we just STOP MEASURING EACH OTHER BY WHATEVER THE HELL IS CONVENIENT and just accept EACH OTHER as being someone special... without trying to exploit the hell out of them? You see, that is what's so wrong with the world - and especially America - these days. We've stopped seeing individuals and started seeing "potential assets". In Independence Day, everyone in the story had humongous value: as a character in the story and as a person worth considering. In this story of survival, we all really were in it together. And there was no "class structure" or elitism in place that kept some from pulling their fair share of the load.
Think about it: if the story of Independence Day was to really happen, today, does anyone seriously think that President George W. Bush would jump into a flightsuit, walk toward an F-16 and tell someone that "I'm a combat pilot... I belong in the air"? Hell, Bush would never have let himself mingle that close with common folks who were living in a flotilla of mobile homes. If a real alien invasion was to happen, he would send some other poor saps up to do the fighting while swaggering his arms and telling the aliens to "Bring it on."
Good lord, if only we could have a real President like Thomas J. Whitmore in the White House: someone who actually did care enough about his fellow Americans to fight alongside with them, without hiding from them. Whitmore in Independence Day is the ultimate ideal President of the United States, in my book anyway. And that's also part of why I love this movie so much: like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, it shows us, maybe not what we have realistically, but it does show us what we can and should be looking for in those who ask to be entrusted with so much power. Whitmore, I could trust with being President if he were a real person... not so much with just about any stripe of politician in Washington today (with the exceptions of maybe Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul).
The Jolly Roger
Could we still have an America like that today? I like to think so... and I like to also think that it won't take anything like an alien invasion to make it happen either. And I think that Independence Day touched a lot on what it will mean to make that come about. F'rinstance, consider Jasmine, played by Vivaca A. Fox...
Jasmine at the wheel
Jasmine is like that guy in New Orleans who stole the schoolbus after Katrina hit and brought dozens of refugees to Houston, out of harm's way. Nobody told Jabbar Gibson to do that and no one told Jasmine to commandeer that city truck and look for survivors of the aliens' attack on Los Angeles either... she just did it! You see, that is why America has failed so much and it was apparent even in the wake of 9/11: we let our government decide the course of action we take, instead of just damn doing it ourselves with the minds God gave us. If Independence Day happened in real-life America, in this era of neo-conservative dominated politics, absolutely nothing of substance would be done to alleviate the suffering of those hit by the attacks... at least not without "compassionate government" trying to "help". The ironic thing is, Independence Day came out at the height of the Clinton presidency... which was accused of trying to do to America what the current administration has attempted to do from day one!
The short of it is: get the hell out of our way, United States Government. Real men and women know exactly what to do when the need arises, thank you very much.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...!!!"
Well, what else can I say about Independence Day that hasn't already been said? Yeah, it's a movie with all the depth of the typical Irwin Allen disaster flick... with a vastly magnified budget. It's hokey good fun. And maybe I've over-analyzed it over the years but I think despite its flaws and even some frustrations with the plot and dialogue, and for however past-ripe the story is in contrast to our current times, I believe that Independence Day is a movie with a lot of solid merit to it.
I've probably said enough, but there's one thing about Independence Day that I just have to let loose one final rant about. There's something that's been bugging me ever since I first saw this movie, ten years ago to the day. It's this scene:
SHE'S READING A FRICKIN' MAGAZINE!!! I just can't believe this: here's this presidential aide sitting on Air Force One, having just escaped the biggest calamity in recorded history... and she's sitting there reading, it could be Southern Living or Redbook for all we know. WHY THE %@&* IS SHE READING at a time like this?!? Why is she so calm?! I've never understood this and it's bugged me to no end.
Okay, just couldn't write a piece about Independence Day and not mention that one pet peeve I have with this movie :-)
So, to Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich and everyone who worked on Independence Day all those years ago: Happy Tenth Anniversary! You gave us a really good time back in the summer of '96, and it's meant quite a bit to a lot of us in the years since. Thanks for giving us a movie that was not only a lot of fun, but pointed us to what is best about the real America... and real human nature for that matter.
Monday, July 03, 2006
Ain't It Cool News is ten years old!
Ten years ago today, an Austin, Texas cinephile named Harry Knowles officially launched Ain't It Cool News. Say what you will of that site be you fan or detractor, it has more than made its mark on popular culture in the past deci-century. From the very beginning - heck I was there when Harry posted those pics from the Star Wars Special Editions on a plain blank page in March of '96 - this has been one of my very most visited websites. Spend some time on AICN and you not only learn a lot about the movies, but you learn how they are really made, with all the plots and intricacies that go on behind the scenes. In some ways Knowles and his gang have been the best film school you could possibly find for the price they're offering. Anyways, happy birthday Ain't It Cool News, and many happy returns!!
Saturday, July 01, 2006
SUPERMAN RETURNS to a world that's needed him for way too long
Superman Returns is a full-water baptism that finally and thoroughly washes away the reek and stench of the last two Superman movies while bringing the hero back to a pure, clean starting point.
Now, for the elucidation...
Finally caught Superman Returns today, in the good company of my wife Lisa, my friend Chad and his brother Brad. We saw it at the West End Cinema in Burlington: right next to where I went to college at, and the place where I once camped overnight for tickets to Star Wars Episode I. I'd seen everything from the Star Wars Special Editions to Titanic at the West End, and the last time we were there was to see the first Pirates of the Caribbean three years ago, so it was a neat thing to be back on old turf again for what I can only describe as the best movie I've seen so far this summer.
Let me reiterate that: Superman Returns is the best movie I've seen out of the 2006 summer season. And that comes despite some things about this film that I have problems with. But the good definitely surpasses what bad (or nonsensical) there is in the movie. It's definitely a flick I want to catch at least once more this summer.
The first thing that I believe needs to be addressed in this review is that the first two original Superman movies are not required viewing before watching Superman Returns, even though the 2006 film is constantly referencing those two in ways both blatant and subtle. And we were finding all kinds of those in Superman Returns, like the location that's on the nameplate of the meteorite, or that it's Ben Hubbard (mentioned but not shown in Superman: The Movie) who's leaving Martha's house at the beginning of the movie. You can watch Superman Returns without ever seeing Richard Donner's 1978 classic and still have a fresh sense of continuity, but if you've seen the first two movies (thankfully the last two are not touched on at all and in fact made thoroughly kaput by Returns) you'll have something of a "vague back-story" from which to draw upon.
(By the way, from this point on there are story spoilers, so skip reading this until after watching Superman Returns if you haven't done so already. Just trying to keep the surprises for y'all :-)
At the beginning of Superman Returns we are given a brief capsule of what’s already transpired: Superman being the last survivor of the planet Krypton, how he came to Earth and all that. Well, it turns out that astronomers believed they had located the place where Krypton once lay in the heavens, so five years ago Superman left Earth to investigate the remains of his birthworld. Meanwhile, life went on in a world without a Superman...
In the first true scene of the movie we see Lex Luthor (played by Kevin Spacey) swindling a dying woman out of her fortune (look for Noel Neill, the original Lois Lane from the 1950s TV series, in the role of Gertrude Vanderworth. Jack Larson – the TV series's Jimmy Olsen – also shows up later as Bo the bartender). Seems that Luthor was serving a double life sentence for whatever crime it was he committed earlier (you can make up your own mind whether or not this was the "Coasta Del Lex" scheme from Superman: The Movie or decide it was something else we just aren't told about) but when Supes flew the coop there was no star witness to testify so Luthor got paroled after five years in the slammer. Meanwhile, something is streaking out of the sky and lands in the cornfield on the Kent homestead in Kansas. Martha (Eva Marie Saint) comes running out of the house only to have her adopted son Clark – alias Kal-El, the Last Son of Krypton and most especially Superman – collapse into her arms after falling out of his spaceship. It's not long afterward that the story is propelled toward other locales in the Superman mythos: the Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic, Metropolis, and especially the offices of the Daily Planet where Perry White (Frank Langella) is still in charge and Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has earned a Pulitzer for an editorial titled "Why The World Doesn't Need Superman". Lois is eating those words a short while later after being rescued from certain death by the Man in Blue in a scene that is going to surely look hella cool if you're seeing it on a 3-D IMAX screen... yes ladies and gentlemen, Superman is back!
Bryan Singer gave up directing the third X-Men movie to do Superman Returns, and his presence behind the camera stands out sharply in contrast to what happened with X-Men: The Last Stand. I didn't want him to leave that series, but now after seeing what he did with Superman Returns, I can't fault him at all. There is now a three-way tie for what I think is the best comic book movie thus far: Spider-Man, Batman Begins, and now Superman Returns. This is as perfect a superhero movie as you're likely to find. EVERYTHING about it just works so darned well. Including the casting. Which yeah, part of me is thinking that an older actress might have been appropriate for Lois Lane, but Kate Bosworth brings exactly what's needed to the role, including the anger of being seemingly jilted and the angst that comes with being a single mother (to son Jason, played by Tristan Lake Leabu).
But the two standouts that made this movie work so well for me were Brandon Routh as Superman and Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor. Now, there will not now, or ever be, replacing Christopher Reeve as the one who made us believe that a man can fly. But Routh definitely makes us believe that a man can fly again. He brings to Superman a... how can I say this? Okay, Routh makes Superman his own in the way that Reeve made the character his own in 1978: more than being the product of special effects, Superman is a model of virtue and humility. Anyone can be made to look like they're flying, if you have enough money and the right equipment. But to pull off Superman means tapping into something that can't be purchased with even the biggest of blockbuster budgets. It means finding what can be the best of human nature in all of us and projecting that as pure persona. Yes, Superman Returns... to a world that needs the kind of hero he represents, and now more than ever. As much as Christopher Reeve made us believe a man can fly, Routh reminds us that a man can be good... and still matter in this world.
And as for Kevin Spacey... well, what else can I say? He is the big screen's most pure incarnation of Lex Luthor ever. Even in the moments when he's ever-so-slightly campy or hatching a plot that makes no sense whatsoever (see below). Casting Spacey as Luthor was frickin' GENIUS!!
The special effects are incredible (Marlon Brando's "return" to the silver screen is especially haunting). The camera work is beautiful. The acting and directing: stupendous. Yup, this movie has just about everything going for it. Almost...
How the heck does Clark Kent get his old job back? Unless he was one helluva good writer (and who knows maybe he is) you can't just leave a reporting gig at a newspaper on par with The New York Times and expect to come back after five years as if nothing's happened. Sorry, I don't buy that bit about how some other reporter died and there was suddenly a convenient opening for Clark to take. At the very least there should have been a scene where Perry White gives Clark a good chewing-out before screaming "Well what the hell are you doing just standing there, there's a city to cover out there!"
But that's nothing compared to what must be the DUMBEST criminal plot in the history of comic-book movies: using several crystals he's stolen from the Fortress of Solitude, Lex Luthor is going to grow an entire new continent. Seems that in the movies at least, Luthor can't stop it with the land-swindling schemes. With the crystals, Luthor is going to make them generate a Kryptonite-laced landscape off the coast of Metropolis that will eventually engulf the entire eastern half of the United States.
Now, there's several problems with this plan. For openers, Luthor-Land is plum-assed UGLY. Who in their right mind is going to want to live in a place that looks like industrial waste?! Second, Luthor doesn't care that "Billions!" of people are going to die before his plan reaches full fruition... so who the heck is going to populate this new countryside of his?! And when you throw in that the entire world economy is going to be toppled after New York City and Washington and Metropolis and Gotham City are wiped out... well, what's going to be the allure of visiting a "new continent" anyway? For someone who calls himself "the greatest criminal mastermind of our time" Luthor obviously didn't think this all the way through.
Yeah, it's a hokey plot. But it didn't take away one bit from my enjoying Superman Returns. If anything it makes me enjoy it that much more, because it made this movie a great thing to escape into and get away from all the problems that life throws at us... if only for a little while. But isn't that much what makes life worth living anyway?
Flaws and all – what little there are in this movie – I felt leaving Superman Returns that it was time well spent, and something that I really enjoyed sharing with a few people who are very special with me: my wife and two good friends. I really can't think of many other movies that left me feeling this satisfied as the credits rolled.
Superman Returns is everything that a summer movie is supposed to be. And I can't wait to make my own return to the theater to see it again.
EDIT 10:56 PM EST: Can't believe I didn't mention the awesome musical score in this movie, composed by John Ottman. It's so good that I just came back (after attempting to see some fireworks tonight) from getting the Superman Returns soundtrack CD. Ottman's score uses a lot of the familiar themes from John Williams's work in Superman: The Movie (especially the triumphant Superman fanfare and the "love theme"). But there's also plenty of "newer"-sounding stuff too to add to the Superman music mythos. This is gonna be one sweet soundtrack to add to my MP3 player :-)
Avast ye scurvy mateys: the Pirate Party comes to the U.S.
You may have heard of the recent do-to about The Pirate Bay, a website that serves as a search engine to help you find torrented files for download (I've used it a few times to locate bootleg episodes of Doctor Who since we won't be getting new eps of that show here in America for awhile). Well the Pirate Bay got raided by the Swedish police and shut down for awhile, but then came back and now they're becoming a full-fledged political party. Well, now the Pirate Party of the United States has formed. There's no word on when we can expect to see the Pirate Party on the ballot but I think we should draft this guy to be its first candidate for President:
Whil Piavis, AKA "The Pirate Captain", N.C. State student body President 2005-2006
Friday, June 30, 2006
Noah's Ark found, says team (and they even brought photos to prove it)
The World Net Daily site is getting slammed right now but here's part of the story that I was able to pull. Amazing... if true. The Ark has been "found" in about a dozen places stretching from Turkey to Afghanistan over the years, so I'm going to remain healthily skeptical until we know more for sure. But it's still fascinating to consider this might be the real thing:
A 14-man crew that included evangelical apologist Josh McDowell says it returned from a trek to a mountain in Iran with possible evidence of the remains of Noah's Ark.Awright, so you wanna see this thing for yourself, eh? Slam down with the mouse here for some pics of a curious ark-sized object. There's also another story about the find over at AOL News.The group, led by explorer Bob Cornuke, found an unusual object perched on a slope 13,120 feet above sea level.
Cornuke, president of the archeological Base Institute and a veteran of nearly 30 expeditions in search of Bible artifacts and locations, said he is cautiously, but enthusiastically, optimistic about the find...
...Also on the team were Barry Rand, former CEO of Avis; Boone Powell, former CEO of Baylor Medical Systems; and Arch Bonnema, president of Joshua Financial.
The team returned with video footage of a large black formation, about 400 feet long – the length of the ark, according to the Bible – that looks like rock but bears the image of hundreds of massive, wooden, hand-hewn beams.
Bonnema observed: "These beams not only look like petrified wood, they are so impressive that they look like real wood – this is an amazing discovery that may be the oldest shipwreck in recorded history."
The team said one piece of the blackened rock is "cut" at 90-degree angle.
Even more intriguing, they said, some of the wood-like rocks tested this week proved to be petrified wood.
It's noteworthy, they pointed out, that the Bible recounts Noah sealed his ark with pitch, a black substance.
When the retrieved pieces were cut open, a marine fossil was discovered. In the area around the object, the team found thousands of fossilized sea shells, and Cornuke brought back a one-inch thick rock slab replete with fossilized clams.
With the discovery of wood splinters and broken pottery at the remote 15,300-foot level, the team says it also found evidence that ancients considered it an important worship site for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Cornuke became involved in the search for the ark after meeting Apollo 15 astronaut James Irwin, participating with him in several searches on Mount Ararat in Turkey, but with disappointing results.
Cornuke began looking elsewhere, after finding clues in the Bible such as Genesis 11's reference to descendants of Noah coming to the Mesopotamian valley from the east. Cornuke believes that would put the biblical mountains of Ararat somewhere in northern Iran.
He also points to ancient historians such as Nicholas of Damascus and Flavius Josephus who wrote, just before and after Christ, that timbers of the ark had survived in the higher mountains of present-day Iran.
Cornuke noted that during World War II, an American Army officer and road construction engineer in Iran named Ed Davis said he saw the ark on a high mountain in the country after being led there by Iranian friends. After the war, according to Cornuke, Davis passed a lie detector test affirming he saw timbers from an ark-like object.
Before his death, Davis gave Cornuke a map showing the way to the object.
"It was right where Ed said it was in his map," Cornuke said. "After seeing it from a distance, I thought it at first unimpressive, but once we stood on the object we were all amazed at how it looked just like a huge pile of black and brown stone beams."...
