Quick Reviews: Two Out Of Three...

You can probably guess how these grades are going to go down, based on the post title...

The first one's simple: "Argo" is the best movie I've seen this year. When you can make a movie that's not only humorous but truly suspenseful, and make it suspenseful even though it's based on a pretty well-known true story -- the smuggling out of Iran of six Americans who escaped the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979 when it was swarmed by followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini -- you've done your job. Kudos, Ben Affleck. And I really enjoyed the little touches such as actual news broadcasts from the time (remember when ABC's Ted Koppel did those nightly hostage crisis updates, which evolved into "Nightline" as the crisis dragged on and on?). My grade: A-plus.

Not on the same level, but enjoyable on its own, is "Pitch Perfect." When you make a movie about acapella singing groups competing for a national title and manage to avoid it seeming too much like "Glee Goes to College," again, you've done your job. Kudos, uh, I don't know who directed this, but kudos to him or her anyway. (Okay, I looked it up. Jason Moore. Wikipedia says it's his feature film debut.) A lot of laughs and the singing's not bad, either. Rebel Wilson is a flat-out riot. My grade: A-minus.

And now for the bad news. I was hoping for good things from "Seven Psychopaths," because it was directed by Martin McDonagh, who did "In Bruges" with Colin Farrell, who also co-stars in this film. I really enjoyed "In Bruges." I really hated this movie. I wanted to walk out a number of times. Its only redeeming values are the performance by Christopher Walken and the fact that Farrell is so damned pretty. My grade: D-plus.

Storm Damage

There was a lot less rain in this neighborhood from hybrid-hurricane-superstorm-Frankenstorm Sandy than a) predicted b) fell in other areas. There was no water coming in through my roof at all. It got windy but didn't seem excessive. I was very relieved and happy. But this is right down the street from my house...

...and this is in a wooded area near a creek that's in the opposite direction from my house...

Disney Buys Star Wars

Story here. I hope I'm the first one to have created an image like this...although I certainly know others will make much higher-quality versions...

Some Sandy Observations

Just read the 11 am update saying Hurricane Sandy's winds are up to 90 mph -- if they got to 96 it would be Category 2 instead of Cat 1 -- and the storm's pressure of 943 mb, according to Phillyweather.net, is typical of a Cat 4 storm. So there's this incredibly large storm, pretty intense, and atmospheric conditions are causing it to basically make a left turn into the coast near Atlantic City. Such a sharp turn for a hurricane in this region is close to unprecedented, and the fact that it's gotten a bit stronger even though it's moving north and away from more tropical waters is very unusual.

Between this and last year's Hurricane Irene and those ridiculous Snowmageddon blizzards a couple of years ago and lots of other things, don't tell me global warming isn't screwing up our weather. Don't waste my time with that tired non-scientific right-wing stupidity.

Anyway, it's a very strange couple of days. I'm nervous about my roof holding up under the expected rainfall, and couldn't fall asleep last night. I got the newspaper delivered, though, even with the state of emergency being declared. (Might be a different story tomorrow morning.) I finally started to read it and dozed off for about 2 hours. I imagine I'll be sleeping on and off since I'm not leaving the house.

The local TV stations and the Weather Channel are going non-stop with storm coverage but it seems like there's nothing on any stations that warrants my watching it for very long. Coverage ranges from inane to inept. 

So far, except for the time I was sleeping, it seems like it hasn't rained to an extreme extent. The brunt of it is still south and west. The good news is, if what I'm reading is correct, the landfall might occur a little earlier than previously thought. Phillyweather.net pegs it at between 4 pm and 7 pm. If so, perhaps it'll clear out of here sooner.

I might update this later. Maybe even with video.

UPDATE 1: Took some video around 4:20 pm. Just rain and some wind. The worst of it is still to come, they say.



UPDATE 2: Another video. Since it's getting too dark I don't know if I'll bother taking any more. Lot more wind, lot less rain at this time (6:15 pm).



UPDATE 3: 10:15 pm. Can't see much because it's too dark. Listen to the wind, though. Tree branches were really swaying.

Philly Photo Day 2012

For the second year in a row I decided to take some photos for Philly Photo Day. Last year I was working. This year I'm not. So I actually got to hit a couple of areas of the city and take almost 60 pictures. Circumstances prevented me from taking more. Maybe next year. Once again, I can submit a photo (just one) to have exhibited in a show which will take place in December.

Below is a slideshow for you to view. If you have an opinion about which pic I should submit (or if I should crop any of them to improve them) let me know. I have to decide by the 30th which one to put into the show. There's a new twist this year: selected pictures will be on display on buses, trains and even billboards for a month. So I really need to pick a good one.



A few I'm slightly leaning towards:

MLB Stupid, CFB Stupid

Just a couple of sports rants here. Perhaps "annoying" is the more appropriate word for one of the two  mentioned in the post's title, but I'm sticking with "stupid."

Major League Baseball: They decided to add a second Wild Card team in each league, determining that the two Wild Card teams in each league would have a one-game playoff to decide which team moves to the Division Series. Then, they decided to rush to implement it this year. First, it allowed mediocre and underachieving teams like the Diamondbacks, Angels and, yes, Phillies to pretend they were actually contending at the end of the season.

Then, because they rushed it into effect this year, when the schedule had already been set and there was little flexibility for fitting another playoff game into the schedule, it was decided that the winner of the Wild Card game would start the best-of-five Division Series at home instead of flying to the city of their opponent, the team with the best record in the league. So that team got punished by starting with two games on the road followed by three at home, instead of the customary two home, two road, final game at home. I didn't realize it at first but the same rule applied to the Division Series involving the other division winners as well.

The result of this, besides a World Series between the Detroit Tigers and San Francisco Giants (Tigers in 5, by the way)? Home field disadvantage. There have been 33 games in the playoffs so far, and the road team has won 17 -- more than half. The two Wild Card games went to the road teams, and in the four Division Series the road teams went 11-9. Some sanity was restored in the League Championship Series as home teams won 7 of 11 games.

College Football: This is the one that's more annoying, and part of my problem is that, because I didn't go to college, I have no true rooting interest. I can sort of root for the local schools, but that only goes so far. What's made things worse is the big schools' switching conferences in recent years, chasing after more and more money. It's watered down or ended a number of traditional rivalry games, caused ridiculous anomalies such as the Big Ten conference having 12 teams and the Big East soon to include schools from places like Idaho and California, all of which makes it more difficult for the casual fan to keep track of. And (helped by the television networks) it's led to about thirty different games available on TV every Saturday, many of them being played at the same time on different networks. With all of this, when I do want to sit and watch a game, I have no idea which one I should watch, so I end up flipping back and forth hoping to find something compelling, usually without success.

And don't even get me started on the BCS or the eventual switch to a four-team playoff.

Phila. Daily News Update

I previously outlined some problems I had with my newspaper, which were enough to make me consider not renewing my subscription. I ended up renewing it, so I'm still a Daily News subscriber.

Although (and sorry in advance for this digression), every time I see the right-wing garbage from one of their editorial board members, Christine Flowers, I want to vomit. I don't even read it. I just see her name and wonder why she's allowed to spew her filth. I mean, there was an editorial in the paper regarding the teenage girl who wore her Mitt Romney t-shirt to school and was harrassed by her teacher, leading to all kinds of stupidity, media whoring, etc. The editorial says, in part:

The T-shirt flap and the resulting hostility that had a high-school student afraid to return to school because of obscenities hurled at her parents and rumors that students were going to attack her is a sickening indictment of an uncivilized society that has become increasingly intolerant of differences of opinions, political outlooks, religious beliefs and beyond.

Whether it takes the form of blatant questioning of, say, the current president's love of God, country, or his supposed lack of a birth certificate, or nasty commentaries on non-Christians, or distorted political ads with both sides accusing the other of lies and worse, or even Rush Limabugh calling a Georgetown legal student a slut and a whore for speaking out about birth control, the rise of the political echo chamber that has replaced useful and thoughtful debate that is grounded in respect is the real culprit.

Quite the thing, except these words are a near-perfect description of Christine Flowers. The only area where she has anything but an extreme right-wing view is on immigration. She has stated that, as a practicing attorney, she represents immigrants trying to stay in the USA. I can't help but wonder how she'd feel about it if she weren't making money off these people. I also can't help but wonder, considering the stance taken in the editorial, why the paper continues to employ her, thereby contributing to this "uncivilized society."

Anyway, that's not why I'm writing this post. Regarding one of my post's criticisms, there's good news: starting in January, home subscribers of the Daily News and Inquirer will get the digital version of the paper for free. I'm very happy about this because if I'm out of town I'll be able to read the paper on my tablet. I don't know why it can't start right away, but that's a minor quibble.

Speaking of minor quibbles, this centerspread appeared in last weekend's Sportsweek edition. There was a feature story on the Eagles' time at the Vet as this season marks the 10th anniversary of their last season before moving to the Linc. This photo begs the question...

...why did they use a picture taken during baseball season?

Quick Reviews (Catching Up Again)

Yeah, I fell behind in discussing movies again. Seeing as how you don't pay me to do this, though...anyway, I'll start with the one that's not really a 2012 movie: "Finding Nemo," which was re-released in a 3D version this fall. Of the Pixar movies, there are only three I haven't seen in full. I've seen parts of "A Bug's Life" and have no intentions of ever seeing "Cars 2." So "Nemo" was the only gap in my Pixar resume. I liked it a lot but didn't love it. If it were on my 2012 movie list I'd give it a grade of B.

"House at the End of the Street" started out slowly but I ended up enjoying it more than expected, especially since it didn't involve a supernatural murderer-come-back-to-life the way it seemed (at least to me, from the little I heard of it going in). And the revelation at the end was a surprise. My grade: B-minus.

I wasn't totally enthralled with "Looper." As much as I love Joseph Gordon-Levitt, I didn't like how they used some prosthetic nose getup to make him look like Bruce Willis. Like "Men in Black III," the time-travel machinations didn't make sense, and even though a meta commentary by Willis' character essentially told the audience that we shouldn't worry about time-travel continuity making sense, I can't go for that (no can do). A certain amount of logic is required. My grade: B.

"Hotel Transylvania" presents Adam Sandler as an animated Dracula. The idea of a hotel that caters exclusively to monsters and keeps them from contact with humans was sort of clever, but it wasn't what it could be, and, I repeat, Adam Sandler as Dracula. My grade: C-minus.

Two More TV Shows

Following up on my previous two TV posts...

I've tried two more new series...well, one isn't entirely new...and added them to my DVR. (I almost always record every show, even when I'm home, so I can fast-forward through the commercials.)

The hype over "American Horror Story" got me curious, and with the strange way that it's now not actually one series but separate miniseries (for Emmy purposes or whatever), the new season tells a completely different tale (thus the title being "American Horror Story: Asylum."  As I didn't need to see the first edition to know what was going on, I decided to tune in. It's very weird, obviously. The first episode didn't truly scare me, and I sort of guessed what was going to happen to one character at the end. I wasn't overwhelmed. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep watching, but I'll give it at least one more week.

The other show, now two episodes in, is "Arrow." As I previously mentioned, it's a very different take on  DC Comics' Green Arrow. I'm not sure they ever plan to give him that name -- right now he isn't called anything. He's just an anonymous vigilante, and he isn't above killing people if necessary, so it's not anything like a superhero show. I wouldn't call it brilliantly acted, and some characters aren't very developed yet, but I'm surprisingly intrigued by the premise.

So my TV schedule currently looks like this: Sunday is "Simpsons" and "Family Guy," and now "Robot Chicken." Monday has "Bones," and my weekly dose of Logo: "Be Good Johnny Weir" just finished season two (I felt it was more self-indulgent and scripted, so I'm not sure I'll be around if there's a third season), and its slot will be filled this Monday by "RuPaul's All-Stars Drag Race." Besides "Don't Trust the B---- in Apt. 23," Tuesday now has new episodes of Cartoon Network's "The Looney Tunes Show." Wednesday is "Arrow" and "American Horror Story: Asylum." "The Big Bang Theory" and "Glee" are on Thursdays, and eventually "Community" and "Malibu Country" will arrive on Friday.

With these cable shows debuting, and more on the way at some point ("Mad Men," "Southland") I'm concerned that it's going to take up more of my time to stay caught up. Of course, I don't really have much of a life, so...

Sky At Sunset Tonight

The first two pictures are from my tablet, as I was making my way to the supermarket near my house. It wasn't as dark as it appears in the photos -- that's just due to the light and lack of flash. There was such a straight edge to the line of clouds, a sharp divide between clear sky and cloudy sky.

The next two were taken after I left the supermarket, but before I ventured into the parking lot away from the shopping center. These are from my phone's camera, as I needed to take pics one-handed while carrying plastic grocery bags in the other. I don't think these pictures really picked up the colors in the clouds at the time. Again, it looks darker than it actually was.

Money's Too Tight (To Mention)

If you know music of the 1980s then you know this song by Simply Red, although a couple of things seem to have slipped my memory. First, I didn't really remember the direct jabs at Ronald and Nancy Reagan near the end of the song. In addition, according to Wikipedia this was the band's first single, released in 1985, with their first big smash "Holding Back The Years" not coming out until 1986. Somehow I had them reversed in my mind.

At any rate I think some artist should cover it now, updating the lyrics to refer to Mitt Romney and some other GOP frauds instead of the Reagans.

A Fox-"Bones"-Romney Conspiracy Theory

I present to you a still image from Monday night's episode of "Bones." Here we see a map on a screen at the Jeffersonian, the fictional institution where all the forensic evidence in the murder cases on the show is analyzed. This map displays an area from which came some of that evidence, based on...well, a bunch of scientific jargon that I usually can hardly keep up with. No big deal, right? But when I watched it, a name on the map caught my eye. In fact, it jumped out at me immediately. So I paused the DVR and took two pictures. Look closely...

If you can't tell what I'm talking about, here's a closeup...

WTF, you ask? Why is Mitt Romney's name on screen? Is it a devious form of subliminal advertising by Fox, or by the show's producers, or a conspiracy planned by both?

Well, I did a Google search and found that the map is of an actual town -- Romney, West Virginia, not all that far from Washington, where the show is based. Still, I can't help but wonder. Can it really be a coincidence that the map used in an episode airing a month before the election is of a town that shares the same name as the GOP candidate for President?

Wait -- on the other hand, we all know that Hollywood is dominated by liberals. So maybe another plot was devised. Maybe the producers threw his name on screen just to rile up the Romney opposition -- maybe Barack Obama even gave them the idea!

What do you think? Should we demand an investigation by the Senate or something?

My iTunes Shuffle Baker's Dozen 10-4-12

There's a twist here. These aren't the first 13 songs that played, but the most recent 13. I've been sitting at the computer for a little while and some of these songs really hit the spot for me today, so...

I Got You Babe - UB40 with Chrissie Hynde)
If I Could Only Win Your Love - Emmylou Harris
I'm Not Perfect (But I'm Perfect For You) (Right On Time Edit) - Grace Jones
Run On - Moby
Miami - U2
Mirrors - Natalia Kills
Crush - Dave Matthews Band
Thin Line Between Love And Hate - Annie Lennox
Living In A Box - Living In A Box
Rules & Regulations - Rufus Wainwright
All I Know Is The Way I Feel - The Pointer Sisters
Jeopardy - Greg Kihn Band
Gettin' Away With Murder - Patti Austin

Note to self: need to post a wrap up of my summer playlist additions, now that it's October (even though it feels like summer again, it's so humid).

Political Chess (Inspired by Ben Franklin and a singer!)

You should know that this post has been quite a while in the making. Well, actually, it was a couple of hours or so in the actual making and the rest of the time was spent on other things. But the inspiration for this came way back in February 2011. I procrastinated, as I often do, and then time would pass, and then something would happen to make me think of this again, and then I'd procrastinate some more, lather, rinse, repeat. I'd think that it would be good to finish this to coincide with certain events, and then I didn't. Until now.

So, back in Febuary 2011, on my Twitter feed I saw a tweet from Mike Furey, lead singer of what was a duo called Dangerous Muse (the other guy went off to do his own thing; Furey is continuing the group using other musicians as needed). I discovered them through a music video played on one of Logo's music shows a few years ago, and I've been a fan ever since.

It was a fairly simple query.

Now and then, I like to reply to the celebrities I follow, though I think most of them, even if they tweet personally and everything isn't handled by a publicist, probably don't even see my tweets. But sometimes they're kind enough to acknowledge my existence. So, that night, I replied...

A short time later, I found this in my feed:

This intrigued me.

TV Tryouts: Elementary, 666 Park Avenue

In my last post I mentioned that I planned to try these two shows, and so I have. But first, I tried "Partners" again. I couldn't DVR it because I was recording "Bones" while watching baseball, so I figured I could watch it On Demand. Except, oddly enough, it wasn't one of the shows CBS offered On Demand. So I had to watch it online. I went to CBS.com and, well, I lasted through the first scene after the first commercial break. Sorry, Michael Urie, I love you but this show sucks. (By the way, CBS.com, if you're going to show commercials and not allow us to click past them, at least show three different commercials and not the same stupid Macy's commercial showing people like Martha Stewart and Justin Bieber working in the store THREE TIMES IN A ROW.)

Now then...I might have enjoyed "Elementary" a little more if the Sherlock Holmes character wasn't named Sherlock Holmes. Unlike the BBC "Sherlock," which took great care in bringing the characters into the present day, "Elementary" just makes changes for the sake of change. Look, Holmes lives in New York now! Look, Watson is a woman now! And so on. The rest of it is just a standard crime procedural show without fancy CSI graphics. Despite the charms of Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu as Holmes and Watson, I won't be tuning in again. (By the way, are Miller's tattoos real or are they just for the show?)

As for "666 Park Avenue," I just found it boring. A show starring Vanessa Williams should never be boring. And her character is boring, at least so far.

Our lesson so far: the new shows I've sampled are all failures.