Quick Reviews: Six Recent Films

I'm giving myself an assignment: put up a post about as many of the eight films I've seen this month as possible before I go to bed, which will be soon as I'm off to Washington, DC in the morning, Three nights away from home are beckoning, so...

Cloud Atlas: I nearly walked out on multiple occasions. There are six different storylines set at various times, from the days of slavery to a post-apocalyptic future, and the film cuts back and forth between them constantly. They're tied together by the fact that many of the actors (including Tom Hanks and Halle Berry) appear as multiple characters, and by some other plot points. There's some grand theme about humanity and how we treat others and so on, but it was such a confusing mess it's a miracle I didn't leave. I guess it was a novel attempt at something different, which keeps it from being a complete failure. My grade: D-plus.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower: Really impressive and well-acted. Emma Watson completely makes you forget she was in the Harry Potter movies. Definitely deserved a better box-office fate. My grade: A.

Wreck-It Ralph: Like the "Toy Story" of video games in its nostalgia. Funny moments, interesting premise, ultimately not quite as brilliant as the "Toy Story" films. Still definitely worthwhile. My grade: B-plus.

Flight: Quite good but a little overrated in telling

Say It Another Way...

A slightly different pronunciation makes a world of difference. This is an actual place -- I used to go past it on a regular basis (ex-boyfriend lived nearby so either I was on a bus or he was driving me to/from his house). I always made the same joke about it. So the other day I happened to be on that same bus route and used my camera to record some video as the bus went by, just so I could get a screen capture of it to share with you. You're welcome.

Rittenhouse Square/30th Street Station

More photos. Taken Wednesday, mostly while I was in Rittenhouse Square. Mostly I was just sitting on a bench while I took these...

These last two, taken after sunset, are from Chestnut Street near (I think) 29th, looking towards 30th Street Station and the Cira Centre behind it. These are the type of pics that would look better if I took a photography class or something. My flash is limited, of course, but perhaps there are settings that would make for a better picture. Or perhaps I just need a better camera.

Today's Sports Sexism

Sports on television has always catered to the straight male audience, whether it's the camera shots of cheerleaders or the predominantly young female sideline reporters. So naturally this makes sense.

As a result of the Comcast takeover of NBC Universal, Comcast Sportsnet Philadelphia's nightly "SportsNite" show now includes a brief weather update from NBC10. I'm not sure if the NBC10 staffer delivering the weather on CSN is the same every night, but my guess is if it's not, one staffer gets the majority of these updates. And that would be tonight's star, Sheena Parveen...

I mean, really, if you're a straight man wouldn't you rather get a weather update from her than from Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz?

Eastern State Penitentiary Photos

Another post with photos! These are from my visit in mid-September to Eastern State, the prison-turned-tourist attraction (the same place where the Bastille Day celebration is held). It housed the infamous Al Capone and Willie Sutton during its active existence. Besides the prison itself, there are some art installations as well, a couple of which are more interesting than others. The entire collection is here.

The audio tour was recorded by actor Steve Buscemi, by the way.

...and guess who stayed in this cell?

The Same Old New Daily News

Yeah, I'm talking about the newspaper again. This week the Daily News debuted its latest redesign: new logo, some rearranging, a few new features. (And the size of the pages is smaller. The last redesign resulted in a little extra blank space at the top and bottom of each page. That space is now gone. Maybe soon it'll be the size of a paperback.) Honestly, to me it wasn't as big a deal as they made it out to be, although obviously the hype was done to get attention and sell papers.

So what am I complaining about now? First, this was in the paper all week:

Not the car ad, the part about the beta version of their app. (Should have cropped this first.) I went to that site multiple times during the week to try and download it, only to get a message that the page didn't exist. I sent an email to the address shown in the paper and didn't get a reply. Finally on Thursday the page actually existed, but this time I got the message that the Android version is only available for 10-inch tablets. For now, my 7-inch Baby Tablet is being discriminated against.

It only bothered me a little. It wasn't enough to inspire this post. Then I saw this sentence in this weekend's Sportsweek edition in an article about the Eagles, in which various writers gave their advice for what the Birds should do for the rest of this downtrodden season: "Give Foles the reigns." As in, Nick Foles should start at quarterback even if Michael Vick is cleared to play when he recovers from his concussion.

Of course, this makes no sense. The proper spelling in this case would be "reins" as in "Use the reins when riding a horse," not "reigns" as in "Prince Harry reigns over naked debauchery in Vegas."

These kinds of errors happen often enough that I still wonder whether the Daily News employs copy editors to correct spelling errors by its writers, or if the writers spelled it correctly and the copy editors are just not competent. They're minor annoyances, but annoyances nonetheless.

But if the one misspelling that I hate the most, "definately," ever appears in the paper, I will go postal.

Monday's Photo Walk

So on Monday, when it was 70 degrees for probably the last time in quite a while, I decided to take the El into town and wander around with my camera. (This whole photo-taking thing is really becoming something serious. I need to do something about this. Maybe lessons or something to learn more about editing, framing shots, and so on.)

I had one specific thing I wanted to get -- a mural from the Mural Arts Program I had seen recently and wanted to discuss. It's actually not one of my favorites. It's called "Wall of Hearts" and, as you can see, features a design from Jane Seymour.

This mural is little more than an advertisement for her jewelry collection. I love looking at murals and I've often expressed my love of the Mural Arts Program on this blog -- but this saddens and kind of offends me a bit.

Anyway, beyond that I got some other pictures, and if you click on this link you'll see them all. (Decided to use Photobucket for this even though I haven't figured out how to embed their slideshow.) Besides these below, there's a preview of Christmas, a famous old theater, street art on a billboard and some other stuff.

SERIOUSLY, Facebook?

SERIOUSLY?

I hate Facebook more and more. Seriously.

A Tale Of Two Justins

Dear Justin Bieber,

It's quite simple: if you don't like being compared to Justin Timberlake...



...why would you sing a Timberlake song in concert?



Please go away,
Sincerely,

Joe in Philly

P.S. Sorry to hear about your recent breakup with Selena Gomez. If you need to talk, I know a guy who'd love to listen.

P.P.S. It's not me. Good grief, no.

History For Music Lovers

So I was looking at my Gmail account -- which I set up early this year but never actually use, at least not yet. And I found a few emails in it, mostly from YouTube comments. One of them was interesting, though. Remember when I wrote about the Bastille Day celebration at Eastern State? If not, refresh your memory. The first video, featuring the Lady Gaga "Bad Romance" parody, is the one that got the comment. It seems that the parody was originally created by an outfit called History for Music Lovers, and they've got a whole slew of these. Here's their full-length version of the "Bad Romance" revamp, "The French Revolution."



Still think this guy's adorable, by the way. Someone hook me up, please?

Pete Happy

In September my friend Kurt got another chance to sing the national anthem before the Camden Riversharks again. (Video below.) And guess who also showed up?

None other than Pedro Feliz (above, left). He's spent most of the last two seasons with the Riversharks. He'll be 38 in April. I don't know how long he's going to keep playing but, needless to say, he'll always be fondly remembered for driving in the game-winning run the night the Phillies won the 2008 World Series.

The Sun Sets On Manhattan

I'm going to try and get caught up on posting my photo albums from my various trips. This slideshow has most of the photos from my trip to New York City at the end of July. (I posted pics from my visit to the 9/11 Memorial separately, you may recall.)

I arrived on Sunday afternoon and, after checking into my hotel (Comfort Inn on the Upper West Side -- I got a nice rate but it wasn't so great -- refer to the first picture in the slideshow) I went for a walk and discovered a street festival on Columbus Avenue. After I had a margarita and a huge burrito for dinner (not planned, but it started to rain and the place was right there) I took the subway to Brooklyn, and walked around the riverfront park, eventually arriving at the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Then I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge back to Manhattan. Some of the pics I took during this time of the skyline are among my favorites of all the pictures I've ever taken.

About Last Night...

I told you I wasn't worried. The chess match played out as I expected. But to be honest, even after reading Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog in the closing days and watching President Obama's chance of winning go from about 73 percent on October 29 to 91 percent early yesterday, I was a bit concerned. Not to a great extent, but just enough. I wasn't so worried about the polls -- I find it impossible to take them seriously on an individual basis, the polling criteria are so varied, but summarizing them and determining the trends and such, the Silver calculus works for me. (This will not change my mind about the baseball stat geeks and their Moneyball junk, however.)

My biggest concern was that the GOP would try to steal Florida or Ohio again. Well, if they did try, they failed.

But beyond the Obama victory, other events offer signs of hope. The asinine GOP extremists who opined that there's such a thing as "legitimate" rape and rape that "God intended to happen" both got their asses kicked. Beyond the win in Wisconsin by Tammy Baldwin, making her the first openly gay U.S. Senator, California sends to the House the first LGBT person of color in Congress. And Arizona -- Arizona!?! -- may  have elected a bisexual woman to Congress (the race is still too close to call).

What really stunned me, though, was the results from the four states where marriage equality was on the ballot. The last 32 or so times that voters had their say on the issue in some way, the pro-equality side lost every single time.

I saw a comment from a pundit saying (and I'm paraphrasing) that it would be helpful/important to have two victories out of the four. I guess that would constitute a trend. I was honestly hoping for just one.

My iTunes Shuffle Baker's Dozen 11-06-12

I hope you put more thought into how you voted than iTunes did in selecting the following songs...


Oz - Mark Weigle
Let's Go All The Way (Down) - Brenda & The Tabulations
Infinite & Unforeseen k.d. lang
Lovin', Livin' And Givin' ('Ross' LP mix) - Diana Ross
This Little Pig - Living Colour
Perfect - Depeche Mode
You're Number One (In My Book) - Gladys Knight & The Pips
To Love Somebody - Jimmy Somerville
Same Thing In Reverse (Brick In My Handbag Mix) - Boy George
Radiophonic - Pet Shop Boys
Feel So Close (Radio Edit) - Calvin Harris
10-9-8 (Dance Mix) - Face To Face
The Shag-Adelic Austin Powers Score Medley - George S. Clinton

#WhyImNotVotingForRomney

I saw the hashtag on Twitter and just had to use it. But since I didn't want to issue a bunch of individual tweets, I decided to put it all on here...well, maybe not everything, but as much as I can think of right now.

I'm sick and tired of the Republican party in general.

I'm sick and tired of the extremist, racist segments which have taken firm control of the Republican party -- the Tea Party and the religious right (aka the American Taliban). Even if Mitt Romney is not in fact a racist or a religious extremist, he has encouraged and emboldened the racists and religious extremists with his words and actions, making him no better.

I'm sick and tired of the wealthy and the large corporations getting more and more tax breaks that they do not need, and reduced regulation in so many areas, while the rest of us find our lives becoming more and more of a struggle every day. Mitt Romney will continue the tax cuts for the wealthy. In fact, as it was reported yesterday, it seems that Mitt Romney may not have paid a single penny in taxes for the years 1996 through 2009. NOT A SINGLE FUCKING PENNY. FOURTEEN YEARS.

I'm sick and tired of not having the same rights as everyone else because of my sexual orientation, and of having a woman's right to control her own body being restricted or completely removed, and having Planned Parenthood and other agencies that provide quality health care services threatened, all due to the influence of the American Taliban. Romney has thrown in with the American Taliban on these issues.

I'm sick and tired of the lack of affordable quality health care for everyone. I'm sick and tired of the efforts to stop health care reform, when we've finally begun to make progress after decades of failure. Not only has Romney thrown in with the Tea Party extremists, he's going against the health care reforms he pushed for while Massachusetts governor. This is not leadership -- this is hypocrisy and gutlessness.

I'm sick and tired of hearing about how jobs aren't being created because taxes aren't low enough, and how Barack Obama didn't do anything to fix the economy. Taxes for the wealthy were cut during the execrable George W. Bush presidency and somehow we ended up with many fewer jobs and the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression. Why didn't the "job creators" create jobs with the windfall profits they received then? Why does anyone think they'll do it now? And while the economy is still in bad shape, all the indicators show it's beginning to recover. And it would have begun sooner had it not been for the Tea Party extremists in Congress who have spent the last four years doing nothing but blocking any legislation supported by Obama, because their ONLY goal for the last four years has been to do everything possible to make sure Obama wasn't reelected.

I'm sick and tired of the GOP still trying to paint Barack Obama as weak on foreign policy and terrorism. If the death of Osama bin Laden isn't enough evidence to the contrary, Mitt Romney proved with his blundering excursion to London during the Olympics that he has about as much expertise in foreign affairs as Paris Hilton.

I'm sick and tired of the Tea Party extremists and American Taliban's complete repudiation of science. Whether in fighting against stem-cell research or regulations to improve the environment and lessen the effects of climate change (unthinkable, especially after the unprecedented strength and path of Hurricane Sandy) or teaching "creationism" instead of evolution in schools, there's no excuse for this utter stupidity.

And, because it just seems to need to be said, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.

It's very simple: unless you're a wealthy, white, heterosexual male, or a racist, there is simply no reason to vote for Mitt Romney. He is NOT on your side. His policies will NOT make your life better. Only a complete moron would think otherwise.