Forgot to mention, I saw the movie Hellboy last Saturday, and had a few words about it.
Really good. For a long time I’d heard about plans for a Hellboy movie and was really skeptical that anyone could make a good one, but when I started seeing the actual previews, I got excited about it. And the movie delivered. It stayed extraordinarily true to the comic and Mike Mignola‘s vision.
Totally worth it. Go see it!
Maybe it’s just me, but I think this season of “24” is really weak, especially after last season. I thought this at the beginning of the season, and after Sunday night’s episode (and tonight’s follow-up), this weakness was just reiterated for me in spades.
It just really smacks of bad writing, bad plotting. Jack Bauer had to kill his boss? WTF? Sloppy, poorly thought out, poorly executed (no pun intended). If it’s simply for shock value, as my wife suggested, then I think it’s really bad writing.
But then again, it’s hard to follow up last season: they offered up Ass-Kicking Jack, Sacrifice-Himself-to-Save-the-World Jack, and Return-from-the-Dead Jack. This season? Junkie Jack, Desperately-Undercover Jack, and Cold-Blooded-Murder Jack.
It’s almost as lame as me writing about how lame it is.
Eric Rescorla speculates about casting for an A-Team movie (should someone in Hollywood ever get the urge to make one). Nice. But my first thought was, why not let the original actors play the roles? (They’d have to find somebody to take over Hannibal, of course.) Sure, it could be done, but that isn’t really how Hollywood works, sadly. It would have to fit the pattern of movies based on old TV shows: tweak the concept to bring it up to date, and cast current movie actors in the roles.
So, if an A-Team movie couldn’t be made with the original cast (I mean, could anyone other than Mr. T play B.A. Baracus? Really?), here’s my take on the Hollywood-ified concept and cast:
Plot: Four Desert Storm vets, framed for a crime they didn’t commit, help the innocent while on the run from the military. (Timing fits perfectly; in the mid-80s, they were Vietnam vets.) Of course, the opening voice-over (remaining true to the TV show, up to the point) goes:
In 1992 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the [current hot/popular city] underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team.
Think along the lines of the aftermath of “Three Kings,” maybe.
And the cast, my take:
| Hannibal: | George Clooney (must have “Three Kings” on the brain… but also think “Ocean’s Eleven“) |
| B.A.: | Tough one. I’m thinking Chi McBride. |
| Face: | Hmm. How about Aaron Eckhart? |
| Murdock: | Ben Stiller (how could you not?) |
And of course, all the usual elements have to be there: the van, breaking Murdock out of the mental hospital, B.A. has to be tricked into flying (“Hey B.A., drink this glass of milk”), they have to be locked up in a tool shed or a machine shop or something so they can build some sort of weapon/vehicle/means of escape, and finally, of course, Hannibal has to be “on the jazz.”
:)
Here’s an interesting bit of trivia I unearthed last week: in trying to prove to somebody at work that aspirin is a coal tar derivative, I found out that Bayer developed and registered the drug as a trademark in 1899.
By itself, that’s not so interesting, I know. However, it turns out Bayer also discovered, trademarked and marketed another drug: heroin. “From 1898 through to 1910 it was marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough medicine for children.”
Yikes. Of course, then the thought of “Bayer Heroin” kept me amused for a bit:
So yeah, I took the weekend off from blogging. Ran out of steam, I guess; I didn’t even read any other blogs on Saturday, I was engrossed in finishing up Kiln People. Sometimes it’s just plain nice to take a break.
This is a total geek-out post. You’ve been warned.
The kids and I have been watching the Clone Wars mini-series that was on Cartoon Network (we’re watching them on the computer, a few episodes at a time… it’s much more convenient that way), and enjoying it quite a bit. Hell of a clever idea, too, the way they put it together, with 3 minute segments/episodes.
Anyway, I have to say that by far the best episode is Chapter 13, the “Mace Windu kicks ass” episode. This one little episode alone basically makes all this whole Star Wars prequel stuff worthwhile.
Just looked out my back door a few minutes ago and was mildly surprised to see snow falling. I’d heard there was a chance, but you never really expect it this late in the year. Oh well, welcome to Central Oregon—you gotta wait at least until June before you can guarantee no snow.
I make it a point to not really write about politics here, for several reasons. First, it’s a hot topic for too many people. Second, I frankly don’t feel qualified one way or another to sound off; I have opinions, sure, but before I voice those opinions, I better be able to back them up intelligently—and there’s a fair amount of political knowledge that I’m ignorant or just plain wrong about, I bet. Third, it’s been my observation that once you start voicing a political opinion in a public venue like a website, the vast majority of people who respond either are of the same opinion as you (which ultimately degenerates into a mutual admiration society that closes off from the rest of the world) or are fervently opposed to your point of view (which ultimately degenerates into a vicious group of trolls who have nothing better to do than denigrate you because you think differently from them); there’s very little real diversity or intelligent conversation. Finally, politics just doesn’t interest me enough to write about.
Having said that, I’ll write a bit about politics, inspired by having President Bush on television tonight (annoyingly pre-empting regular TV).
I’ll just be blunt. I am so sick and tired of the spin and political bullshit that surrounds politics these days. All of it. Whether it’s Bush and all the shit going on over 9/11 and Iraq and everything, or Clinton and his “That depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is” hijinks, I don’t care. I do not care.
What I want is a President who can step up to a news conference like Bush did tonight, and instead of spinning out lies and evasiveness and bullshit, just look into the cameras and say, “Yeah, we fucked up. I fucked up. I was wrong, and it cost us, and now it’s time to fix things.” Is that really too much to ask? Whatever happened to responsibility, accountability, and humility, anyway?
Hell with it. Rant over.
Here’s something to think about: do any search engine bots and crawlers recognize and parse JavaScript? I haven’t heard of any (and I’m really too lazy right now to do any real research :) ), but I got to thinking about this today, and there’s really no reason that they shouldn’t be able to handle it.
Sure, there’s a lot of cruft and dross in JavaScript code that isn’t relevant in a searchable context, but what about something like I’ve been working on recently: dynamic menus? Each menu item points to a valid page with some contextual link text, but since the menus are generated in JavaScript, the search engine process parsing the content out of the code might easily pass it up and miss the links. Those same links are ultimately being repeated in the actual content of the page, so they’ll be picked up for sure, but what about next time?
Of course, then it would be easy to abuse search engine rankings, by stuffing JavaScript full of hidden and obfuscated content. Perfect for the snake oil of Search Engine Optimization. Even so, though, there might be a lot of content or linkage going unnoticed…
Better late than never, I suppose, but here’s hoping everyone had a good Easter today.
Growing up, I could never understand why Easter always fell on a different day each year, rather than like “regular” holidays like the Fourth of July, or Thanksgiving. Ironically, it was some computer programming trivia that clued me in to how Easter Sunday’s date is determined:
Easter is the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox.
