Leprechaun 2: Back in tha Hood

Leprechaun 2: Back in tha Hood
'Hat & High heels in a rage'

For my readers who may not be enthralled with foreign films, I have subjected myself to the ignominy of watching Leprechaun 2: Back in tha Hood...an American film.

I knew I was in for treat when channel surfing we saw this on cable. I was immediately drawn to the title, Leprechaun 2: Back in tha Hood...that's tha Hood, not the Hood. Apparently, when talking about tha Hood you can't use the proper definite article, the, it has to be tha. Be I glad learned ya sumtin'.

So a girls falls into an underground cave that just happens to be at the end of a rainbow and is also right next to a public basketball court! The chick falls like three stories underground and of course, is unhurt. It's dark as hell down there so the guy that was with her, but didn't fall, is going to get a ladder or something and throws down a lighter to her so she can see.

She finds a candle down there. Yes, there was a cabinet with a candle. She lights the candle with the lighter. Check this out now. As she's looking around the cave/room, we see over her shoulder two lit lamps on the wall! WTF?!?!?! Where did they come from? Why is there power down there anyways? Why does she insist on walking around with a candle when there are lamps right behind her?

They find a chest full of gold coins. They take it back and that pisses of the Leprechaun.
He's a nasty looking little fellow that wears a hat & high heels. The first thing he does before killing his first victim, get high with him. Yup. He's smoking a bong. He gets the munchies and he goes to the fridge to find some grub, after killing the first guy with his own bong though. Death by bong, not a nice way to go...

Meanwhile, the finders of the treasure are living it up. One guy buys a gun. Another buys a ton of weed. A girl steals a gold coin from the finders. Now, according to the movie, each coin is worth about $4,000 to $5,000. And what does she do with this coin? What do you think she did? Sell it? Get it appraised? Buy food for her baby? Call her baby daddy for advice? Go to college? Pay the rent? Nooooooo...this is the hood argh, excuse me. This is tha Hood. She does what any respectable Hood denizen would conceivably do with a stolen previously-leprechaun owned gold coin, she has it melted and made into a gold tooth. Now why didn't I think of that?

The leprechaun gets over his buzz and continues hunting down the thieves. This does seem like a black version of the movie Scream (there's only 1 white guy in the movie) because that Leprechaun gets beat up by everyone. He gets punched, run over, burned, shot, hit with a bat, this guy takes a licking but keeps on ticking.

So how do you kill a Leprechaun? First you have to go to the resident Hood psychic, who just happens to have a Grimoire that explains everything about Leprechauns. According to her, "The Leprechauns single and only weakness is a four leaf clover and his gold." HUH??? How many single weaknesses can a guy have?

After getting beat up extensively by his victims, the tiny dude can manage to kill anyone with any object at hand. In one scene, he kills a guy with a cellphone. Afterwards, he talks to the guy's girlfriend who just happens to call at that time. Tiny dude tries to pick up the victims girlfriend! No shit! The monster starts to give the nastiest pick up lines to the chick! She begins to buy it, red hair, nice smile, but she doesn't like his answer to her question, "How tall are you?" She's a bit taken aback by the 3'6" answer. Tiny dude says, "Yeah, but don't worry. I make up for it in other ways, if you know what I mean." Toooo funny....
The girl hangs up on him and how do we know this? Because we hear a dial tone. Hello?!?!?
Cell phones don't have dial tones.

A lot more running and more killing. An enterprising guy takes hollow point bullets and fills the tips with a ground four leaf clover. Ahhh, where did they find a four leaf clover on such short notice? Well, the guy who was a pothead reaches into his bag of weed and pulls a four leaf clover out of it. Perfectly plausible.

So in the end, the guy has his Leprechaun bullets (since he's impervious to garlic, silver bullets, crosses, stakes through the heart, sunlight, etc.). He has to shoot the monster about 15 times before he eventually falls into a vat of fresh cement that was conveniently left on the roof of the building in the middle of the night. Additionally, the guys must've bought a super handgun because I am not sure any handgun can hold that many bullets.

Great artist

I found some amazing art by a guy names Kurt Wenner. He paints these incredible pieces of art in chalk...on the sidewalk. He play with perspective like no one else and you would think you could fall into his paintings or that they are jumping out at you.

Take a look...bear in mind these are painted on flat sidewalks!

Sample images

Kurt Wenner home page

Freaky Illusion

Look at this optical illusion here.

I figured out two ways to make the image stop moving.
Can you figure them out?

Almost Christmas

One of my favorite bands to listen to during Christmas is the Trans Siberian Orchestra. They are essentially a rock band that create the TSO each year. It's not heavy metal, grunge rock. They take Christmas themes and play them in a unique way. When recording, they use a 60 piece orchestra & a choir.

Each album has an original story in the CD cover. The songs in the album retell a part of the story musically. I think the album Christmas Eve and Other Stories is the best of the bunch. Here is the story of that album. Listen to some samples. (Christmas Eve in Sarajevo is great but feel free to listen to them all)

And then there's the TSO holiday home. A friend of mine sent me the link that shows a home with the best Christmas light display. Of course, the owners timed the display with music form TSO's latest album. I'm not sure if it's real or not but it sure is great!

For the Bereaved

Let all take a moment of silence, for he is in a better place now.

Paradise Now

Paradise Now

THIS was the movie that I wanted to see but we ended up watching Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire instead.

The movie is about two Palestinian guys (Said & Kahled) that have been friends since childhood. Their lives aren't really going anywhere since they are limited to travel in the West Bank. Then one day, they get called by another 'friend' and are informed that they have been chosen to perform a 'mission'. They are to become the next two suicide bombers for the liberation of Palestine.

They only have one more night to spend with their families and they cannot tell them anything of the next day's planned events. Of course, they aren't able to say any farewells.

The next day they prepare for the 'mission'. Preparations include filming their last message, receiving detailed instructions as to what's going to happen, getting detailed instructions as to what's going to happen to them after the bombs explode, getting fitted with the bomb belt, etc.

A very powerful film that lets the average American see how life is viewed by the Palestinian poor. Surprisingly, the movie does not take a political stance and the extent of political views are only the ones explained by the characters.

I think I now understand some of the reasons the Palestinians have for doing what they do, although I do not necessarily agree with them. You get to see the other side of the story...

Well, after they are prepped for the mission, things go awry and they can't go through with it. The friends get separated and they have to find their way back to the base of operations. They take very different paths to get back. The team thinks one of them is a traitor and the other guy has to go search for him.

Believe it or not, there is no explicit violence in the film. The last scene of the movie where we see Said riding on the bus with Israelis was extremely powerful.

All told, for me, the movie reinforced the ideal that the suicide bombers themselves, although confused, pale in comparison to the cunning, kniving zealots that extort them to do what they do.

View Trailer

Yeah, this was a good one. Powerful and made you think.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

'Teen angst with lots of flying creatures'

Went to see the latest Harry Potter movie since I missed going to see the other movie I wanted to watch.

I am definitely not into teen angst movies. Yes, dating while a teenager was difficult, having self esteem issues was not fun and asking a girl out was a horror. Why on Earth would I want to relive or even remember those times? Alas, I was trapped in the theater, surrounded by a raging cloud of prepubescent testosterone and estrogen. I already paid my $18 so I was going to live through the ordeal.

Although the special effects were very good, the plot leaves much to be desired. Harry grabs a boot and gets transported to a fair where almost everyone gets killed. At his school, he gets chosen to enter a contest with other wizards. He wins. Movie ends. Yay.

Details details details...

Professor Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody, who has a freaky eyepiece on his left eye. Sort of like a fake left eye that moves about. That actually caught my attention.

There's one part of the movie where Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody asks Harry to come into his office for a moment (I'm thinking, pedophilia?) and the professor sits at his desk and begins to talk to Harry. At this point, the focus switches from Harry to the Professor and the Professor's RIGHT eye is the one with the freaky patch. The scene pans to Harry then back to the Professor. His RIGHT eye has the machine. After these switches, the left eye once again reclaims the dubious distinction of having a defect.

I think there are a lot of homoerotic subtleties in the movie. I also think there's more than a little molesting going on.

First off, these Professors, they take a bit too much interest in their students.

• The freaky eyed Professor asking Harry to come into his office for a 'chat'
• A Sirius (spelling?) leaves Harry a note telling him to meet him at night in the meeting room, "...and make sure you come alone."
• Towards the end of the movie, the principal gives Harry a speech and then gently strokes his cheek and says "You're not alone"
• Another wizard gives Harry a hint and tells him, take your egg to the shower and mull it over. (I was definitely expecting a schoolboy gang rape to happen when he said that...)

There's a lot of flying shit going on in the movie. I think the director did this to distract us from the discordant plot. In the beginning of the movie, the boot flies and carries the team away. The dragons fly. The horses fly. The flies fly. The wizards fly. The spirits fly. Everything fucking flies!

If you have so much magic, why don't you just teleport? That seems much quicker than flying around like an idiot. Remember space & time are related. It takes time to travel through space to get from one point to another. If you teleport, you save all that time.

Tangent:
Take note of that Neo. You can do everything & anything in the Matrix right? Stop playing Superman and just teleport from one place to another. Stop wearing those sunglasses. Why don't you just dim the Sun by a couple thousand candlepower instead? Much more efficient.
End of Tangent

One memorable scene has the Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody is showing the students a few spells. The entire scene is completely useless and does nothing to further the plot, it only takes 10 minutes to show off the special effects of a bug flying around. The bug gets a torture spell put on it and Harry's friend screams, "STOP IT. YOU'RE HURTING IT!" And she breaks down in tears.

What kind of hypocritical, self-righteous bullshit is this?!?!?! The girls is about 12 years old and she's worried about a BUG? C'mon now! ANY 12 year old girl will call their brother or father to come into their room and kill the spider, bug, insect, animal this is on their window. It's a BUG! A big bug, yes, but still a BUG! And she has an emotional collapse at it's suffering? Idiot.


And finally, the plot of the movie is based on an international competition between wizards. Even though many characters looked like they were from other counties. I was amazed at the fact that THEY ALL SPOKE WITH A BRITISH ACCENT!

Two Indian girls: British accent
A Chinese girl: British accent
Russian: Doesn't speak
Russian Professor: One line, one grunt. Indeterminate accent.
Every other professor: British accent


I'll be the first in line for the next one...

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

"Razor sharp wit, shockingly fast-paced and hysterical dialogue, pulp-fiction-esquire vibe, its pure cheesiness and the cynicism of a beat up old paperback detective novel."

That about sums up this movie. Great film and the narrator actually takes part in the movie and you feel like he's having a conversation with you. He messes up and has to rewind a few times, but that make learning the story very entertaining.

Very funny also. But it's an intelligent humor. I especially loved it when three couples walked out during the movie. Of course, these were the people who weren't laughing at the funny parts because they were TOO STUPID to get it!

"ooh ohh my brain hurts! I can't understand why everyone else is laughing! I must flee this punishment that reminds me of my intellectual inadequacy!Maybe there's a movie with the Rock starring that I can understand!"

Get the Hell out of the theater and don't block my view as your sorry excuse for a brain makes it's way down the aisle! Remember, the door says 'Pull' so make sure you yank on it so you can get out of here!

Lines from Resumes

"Objective: I want a base salary of $50-$60,000 dollars, not including bonus. And some decent benefits. Like a retirement plan, health insurance, personal or sick days."

"Experience: Provided correct answers to customers' questions."

"I can drive heavy duty equipment and trucks up to 25 feet without getting lost."

"Education: Graduated from predatory school with honors."

"Special skills: Highly proficient at vacuuming, dusting and moping."

"Never been fired, although it could happen anytime now."

"Work best with kids five and under."

"I have happily been a 'kept man' for the past 10 years."

"Have extensive experience in turkey manufactures as well as new product development and implementation."

"I am accustomed to speaking in front of all kinds of audiences...I make points as well as I can."

"Personal: Five children. Dog: Jasper. Cat: Morris. Gerbil: Binky."

"I'm inquiring as to weather or not you have any jobs open."

"Experience: Completed semester project with a classmate of mind."

"While in military, was instrumental in creation of a treat detection system."

"My compensation package at my last job included a base salary of $64,500 with excellent benefits including flextime. I am looking for a position in which I can work a more flexible schedule."

"Hire me and you won't regret it--I am funny, cute, smart and creative... really."

"Referees available upon request."

"Pursing a position requiring strong communication skills."

"Work history: Bakery--proactively provided the products with the appropriate fillings, jellies and custards."

"Previous experience: Administrative Assitant. Required high detail orentation and acuracy."

"Previous rank: Senior instigator."

"Looking for an employer that believes in prompting from within."

"...I have recently sold my home and I now live in a large RV so I will be able to relocate quickly."

"Reason for leaving: They stopped paying me."

"Cover letter: Desire the chance to showcase my delightful personality, intelligence and superior judgment, which are so hard to find these days."

"Interests: Music, dancing computers."

"Personal achievements: Successfully played 'Chop Sticks' on a toy piano with my big toes."

"Objective: To obtain a position where I can make a difference, infecting others with my professionalism, enthusiasm and dedication."

"Strengths: Impersonal skills."

"Experience: Cocktail sever."

"Honors: Have been named most reliable, most popular and best actor in school."

"Special interests: I like any projects that are fun."

Please explain any breaks in your employment career: "15 minute coffee break while working at a home improvement store."

"Duties: Constant oversight of kennel operations."

"Other: Joined the Air Force in 1776."

"Vocational plans: Sea World."

Which Country?

Which country is represented by these three items?

Rebel Without a Cause

You can also watch here

Movies

Rented two movies this weekend:

Nothing
Saw this movie in Blockbuster and it was so strange I had to get it.
The movie is soooo bizarre. It's hilarious, but it's soo fucking bizarre.

We see these two guys Dave & Andrew that have been friends for 21 years. They are likeable guys but they are indubitable the biggest losers on the planet.

Dave always has his plans go wrong and people at work hate him and pull nasty pranks on him. Dave's girlfriend frames him for a crime. Bummer. Andrew was a nervous guy that got more nervous when his parent died. He now is completely afraid to go outside his some. He works from home as an online travel agent.

One day several things go wrong for both of them and they are about to be killed by a demolition crew, arrested for pedophilia or arrested for embezzlement. Not a good day. Then, nothing...

Somehow, everything just disappears. I mean the guys are sitting in their home. They wonder where all the people who were after them are, and they look outside. There is nothing there...literally. It's just a big, empty white space.

They go outside and find they can walk on nothing, but it's still nothing. Just a plain white, nothing. It's hard to explain, you just have to see the movie. We the viewers, have a pretty interesting movie to watch, since for most of it we don't have any point of reference.

The guys are paranoid of course! I mean, wouldn't you be? It's not like you are the last person on the planet. It's more like you're the only thing out there (besides your home & your buddy). They go off in an excursion into nothing, to find something.

After a few hours they realize that there's nothing out there. It's all gone. Nothing but white. Then they discover that they have these special powers. Yeah, they end up being like mini-gods in this nothingness. What good is it to have awesome powers if there's no one else that doesn't have them? No one would be suitably impressed...

They have a blast for several days doing anything they want. Then of course, things start to go a little haywire. They begin to fight and powers get turned against one another, in a hilarious way!

So we have a loser, paranoid mini-god fighting another loser, paranoid mini-god. The few other things they have start to disappear until they are left alone. Mano a mano now. I really don't want to spoil the ending but it's not a normal one.

That was the most fucking bizarre movie I have seen. I gotta see it again...

So here Dave & Andrew have had a fight and Dave made his anger go away.

Dave: I'm not mad at you. You want to know why? Because I hated it away. Because this is stupid. I mean, we've been friends for 21 years. I don't want to be mad at you. I don't want you to be mad at me. I want us to have fun. I want us to be happy. And I think we can. I mean, I'm out there and I'm all pissed off at you, and then I was like, well, fuck it! We can do whatever we want, right? So I say, fuck being mad with each other. So what do you say? Why don't you take whatever it is that's bothering you about me and just hate it away?
Andrew: Because I don't want to.
Dave: What do you mean? Why not?
Andrew: Because this is something I want to remember.
Dave: Why?
Andrew: Because you're the type of person who abandons his best friend, and that's something I don't want to forget.
Dave: Fuck you! Shit, now I'm mad again.

And there's a part where Andrew hides and surprises Dave. We HAD to rewind that scene because it was just so amazing they way they did it.

11:14
"A dark comedy with killer timing"

That about sums it up. You simply can't get any darker than this comedy.
There are days, then there are those days and then there are those fucking goddamn pissed of wanna scream your fucking head off kind of days. This is one of those days. Well, not 'those' days, but the 'those fucking goddamn pissed of wanna scream your fucking head off' days.

In a small town, lots of really bad things start to unfold around 11:14 pm. A guy tries to hold up a store, a drunk driver hits a guy (or does a guy hit his car?), some guy tries to piss out of a moving car, another guy finds a dead body in a cemetery (no not a dead & buried body. Those are supposed to be there. I mean a recently killed guy).

Much like Memento, the story is told in a backwards sort of way and you get the chance to figure out slowly how all these things are not random at all but very closely linked. It's a great ride!

Like I said before, you just can't get darker than this shit. A friend revisits the scene of a crime they just fled to pick up his friend's penis? And the friend has to pick it up and take it back to him? Listen, I have a few good friends an all but I draw the fucking line at penis touching!!! The state of attachment of both items in question, my friend and his penis, are irrelevant!!! Me being a compassionate guy and all, I would definitely go with my buddy to look for a wandering penis. If I saw it, I would point it out to him, but he would do all the touching.

Get this the paramedics are already there at the scene! They have custody of the penis. The guy has to try & sneak into the ambulance and snatch the penis. Penis theft! Who would've ever though of such a thing?

911: "911. What's your emergency?"
Dude: "Well, a guy just stole my penis!"
911: "Can you please describe the suspect?"
Dude: "5'10. Black jacket, green pants"
911: "Can you please describe the penis?"
Dude: "His name is Eric. About 9 inches and really thick."
911: "OK, an ambulance is on its way."

They never find the penis in the above scenarios. You know why? Because we all lie about the size of our penises!!!! Cops take mugshots of the wrong organs!!!

OK, back to the movie. As the mostly tragically funny events unfold you see that you really shouldn't be laughing but it's so fucking stupid you can't help it!

View trailer

The Music Industry

I heard a very interesting segment on NPR talking about the problems of the music industry. As we all know by now, the advent of the Internet and peer-to-peer filesharing has hit the industry very hard. They have suffered loss of revenue and a grim future, if they don't adapt.

I have always maintained that the music industry firms are the Luddites of today. They are rebelling against technological innovation because of the change it is causing to their established business model.

The radio segment explained the reaction to the new technology using the Kubler-Ross model. Now how cool is that?!? Take the behaviors that people exhibit when dying and use it to dissect corporate behavior (which, can be seen as an aggregate of human behavior).

Keep in mind that the stages can occur in any order.
So the stages, and how they apply to the industry are:

• Denial - No way. The Internet can't affect our business model.
  
• Anger - Those bastards! Let's sue each and every one of them!
  
• Bargaining - OK OK OK. YOU can download to your PC. But for a monthly fee and you can't copy it to other devices.
  
• Depression - SHIT!! Profits are waaay down! We have to layoff people!
  
• Acceptance - OK we are fucked.

The link to the summary of Forrester research is here.

Interesting, veerry interesting...

Hurricane Wilma Afterthoughts

Now that life is slowly getting back to normal, I tend to think back on the damage & inconvenience that Wilma caused and is causing.

Power

Being without power is not a life altering situation (unless you happen to be on artificial respiration, or in an iron lung) but for the most part it is extremely inconvenient. When the power was out, we were hot, unable to surf the Net, no TV, no gasoline! We took to walking around the neighborhood for entertainment.

After the walk we had several candles lit and listened to the battery powered radio. We got to see the stars at night since the majority of the city was without power. It was dark, very dark. As we ate a candlelit dinner of Chef Boyardee, I realized that candles aren't that great of a light source. They flicker and waver about. Eating processed pasta was tough enough but I began to think about our ancestors that had no electricity. Can you imagine eating a big hunk of mutton by candlelight? Not a fun prospect!

When there's no light around for miles, it's fucking dark as shit! Candles or no candles, you ARE going to be messy. Food is going to spill, crumbs scatter. Now I can understand why the Black Death ravaged the majority of the world population. It was dark as Hell and there were crumbs everywhere! That inevitably led to the continued prosperity of the rat population. Rats never had it so good!

I was sitting there trying to enjoy my processed pasts & meat sauce and many a piece of food fell on the floor. Do you think I am going to scramble around on the floor in the dark trying to find a greasy morsel of food? Nope. I was going to wait in the morning. Then, in the morning, I was preoccupied with trying to fuel my car, going to work (we have a generator). When I got home, I saw the bit 'o gunk and I threw it out. Yeah, that was now.

Turn back the clock a few hundred years. I'm savoring a leg of lamb, venison or mutton, whichever I could get a hold of, I drop several pieces on the floor of my hovel (aka Medieval condo) and leave it there for the morning. In the dark of night, a band of rats & roaches come and abscond all the dropped pieces of food. Yes, I have inadvertently invented the world's first natural vacuum cleaner but the price humanity would have to pay for my innovation! The Fates have a cruel sense of irony!

Darkness & crumbs. Two little seeming inconsequential items that almost destroyed the human race. It only took more than 25 million death for people to figure out that sweeping shit up and turning on the lights would make for a healthier living environment.

Fire

Since I had nothing much to do several nights, I began to trace why I didn't have electricity. I mentally traced back the path the current takes to get to my home. I ended up, to no surprise, at the power plant. In my mental journey, my power plant was coal fired.

That got me to thinking that for all our advances we are basically completely dependent on fire. We have all this great technology but when you really dissect it down to its most basic elements, you end up with...fire. That's really all we are! Apes that have mastered fire!

We have death by fire. Bombs & more bombs. We have death by a shitload of fire....nuclear bomb. We kill people with guns. Guns shoot pieces of metal propelled by....fire. In the olden days, we dispensed the fancy trapping of civilization and we just burned people to death.

Ahhh but what about electricity? The whole thing that started this? Electrical plants are based on fire. Coal plants burn coal, gas plants burn gas, nuclear plants steam water (OK fine, there's no fire there BUT there would be IF there was anything flammable around!).

Cars, they run on fire inside cylinders. Airplanes, same thing except the motor goes in circles instead of up & down.

Seems like our civilization ain't that advanced. So much for diversification! We found one great thing and we use it for everything. BAM! Send a hurricane with a fuckload of water & wind and we all saw how great our fire worked!

Forget about inventing new powerful computers and more types of mechanical things. Get back to basics! REAL basics. Find something else to power our existence!


Tips
Finally, a few more tips that I learned from Wilma:

• If you decide to ride out a major hurricane and the power goes out. Just throw out all meat & meat by-products immediately
• Have lots of paper towels. After a few days when NO ONE has power and there's no hot water, you gotta take a shower somehow. Wet a paper towel and wipe your asshole, armpits & crotch. Clean as new!
• Know where your flashlight is. Really, practice with your eyes closed. THINKING you know where it is when the power goes out is like The Pope, useless but entertaining to watch.
• Use your cellphone sparingly. When the cellphone towers run out of battery power, you'll have no signal
• Don't drive. Gas stations also have no power
• You WILL make friends with our neighbors. Go ahead hang out outside with everyone else. It's too hot & boring to stay inside.
  

Wicked

Just finished reading Wicked by Gregory Maguire.

The book has an very interesting plot. It tell the story of the Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West!

We get to meet Elphaba, a green skinned, pointy chinned baby with razor sharp teeth. We follow her through her teen years until she matures into her namesake. The book is not a simple fairy tale about talking animals and a brat trying to get home. I continue to say that everything is relative. After reading this (and the original Wizard of OZ. The book was included in my digital copy) I can see why events unfolded as they did. Who would of thought that the Witch was actually...good?!?! It was Oz that was the bastard! And Glinda! She wasn't good at all! BBut I get ahead of myself...

All the relationships between the main characters in The Wizard of Oz are fleshed out and the various motives that drive their behaviors are revealed to the reader. When you ultimately read The Wizard of Oz, you realize that the story was simply and end to a much longer series of events.

You know, Dorothy had no fault for any of this, but she really fucked things up for the Munchkins & for the Animals. That bitch...

Grab a copy!

Finding a Terrorist

Google Maps

Here's my first attempt at trying out the google map API.

I decided to map out the tracking coordinates of Hurricane Wilma!

Go here to see the map: http://home.mindspring.com/~ice1000/