Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
E-Mail Conversation with My Family After Looking Over the Headlines on Yahoo
The names of the guilty have been changed to protect their identities.
Brother #3: Some sad news for Aaron. http://tv.yahoo.com/show/30728/news/urn:newsml:tv.ap.org:20080722:obit_getty
Brother #1: She was actually really funny on that show, which I confess I watched repeatedly, since back in those days you were either watching sit-coms or nothing.
I believe Bea Arthur has purchased a burial plot in Arlington.
Brother #3: I confess an affinity to Bea Arthur's character--she was so wise, so patient; there is no better example of how, as we age, we move from innocence to experience--forged, if not new and attractive, then at least strong and true, by the refiner's fire.
Thankfully, ARAM still has the unholy trinity of Bob Saget, John Stamos, and, closest to his heart, Dave Coultier, aka "Uncle Joey."
Me: I'm still trying to fugue out how four senior citizen women managed to afford a home in Palm Beach on Social Security. You had the senile old woman, called "Maaahh" by Bea Arthur. You had the senile old religious woman, played by Betty White. Then you had Bea Arthur's central role. You also had the harlot-ish one lady that was always tramping around.
So sad that I know so much about that show. So very sad.
Brother #2: "purchased a burial plot in Arlington"?
More like Uncle Sam begged her to accept a burial plot in Arlington
There are hundreds of thousands of people buried in Arlington, who, were they able to speak, would utter these words: "I give up my spot for Bea Arthur, please undig me"
Bea is rough yet polished on the exterior and delicate and charismatic on the inside, like a cigarette
My wife and I watch that show regularly. It's on the Lifetime Channel (46) at 11:00 with back-to-back episodes. My favorite character is Rose (the one who is supposed to be naive). Their apartment is huge ... they each have their own bedroom and the condo has a giant living room attached to a giant dining room and then there's a huge private patio in back and the kitchen is giant, roughly three times the size of a normal kitchen. On one episode they show the interior of the bathroom which was about 20 x 20, three or four times as large as any normal bathroom. And supposedly they all work at these volunteer-type jobs.
Me: Brother #2 ….
I'll have to ask you to turn in your gun and your badge. That you know what channel Lifetime is numbered AND what time Golden Girls is on .... it's too much.
Brother #3: Some sad news for Aaron. http://tv.yahoo.com/show/30728/news/urn:newsml:tv.ap.org:20080722:obit_getty
Brother #1: She was actually really funny on that show, which I confess I watched repeatedly, since back in those days you were either watching sit-coms or nothing.
I believe Bea Arthur has purchased a burial plot in Arlington.
Brother #3: I confess an affinity to Bea Arthur's character--she was so wise, so patient; there is no better example of how, as we age, we move from innocence to experience--forged, if not new and attractive, then at least strong and true, by the refiner's fire.
Thankfully, ARAM still has the unholy trinity of Bob Saget, John Stamos, and, closest to his heart, Dave Coultier, aka "Uncle Joey."
Me: I'm still trying to fugue out how four senior citizen women managed to afford a home in Palm Beach on Social Security. You had the senile old woman, called "Maaahh" by Bea Arthur. You had the senile old religious woman, played by Betty White. Then you had Bea Arthur's central role. You also had the harlot-ish one lady that was always tramping around.
So sad that I know so much about that show. So very sad.
Brother #2: "purchased a burial plot in Arlington"?
More like Uncle Sam begged her to accept a burial plot in Arlington
There are hundreds of thousands of people buried in Arlington, who, were they able to speak, would utter these words: "I give up my spot for Bea Arthur, please undig me"
Bea is rough yet polished on the exterior and delicate and charismatic on the inside, like a cigarette
My wife and I watch that show regularly. It's on the Lifetime Channel (46) at 11:00 with back-to-back episodes. My favorite character is Rose (the one who is supposed to be naive). Their apartment is huge ... they each have their own bedroom and the condo has a giant living room attached to a giant dining room and then there's a huge private patio in back and the kitchen is giant, roughly three times the size of a normal kitchen. On one episode they show the interior of the bathroom which was about 20 x 20, three or four times as large as any normal bathroom. And supposedly they all work at these volunteer-type jobs.
Me: Brother #2 ….
I'll have to ask you to turn in your gun and your badge. That you know what channel Lifetime is numbered AND what time Golden Girls is on .... it's too much.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Things I Find In My Basement
I was digging out my basement this week, looking for stuff to sell on E-Bay. Underneath a mountain of pogs and unicorn sketches, I found a yellowed copy of a movie script that I wrote up in high school. At the time, I had dreams of becoming a film producer. Those dreams have long since faded, just like the yellowed copy of the movie script.
While the script is too long to post, I will include a draft copy for the theatrical trailer of the film.
(camera is zoomed in on hands working at a grill, the hands are somewhat worn, somewhat large, and are skilled in the arts of the grill. The hands are slicing peppers and dicing onions with knives, flipping meats over with spatulas, and using a blow torch to light up a Cherries Jubilee cream dessert).
Narrator Voice: "Jack Parcetti was just an ordinary man. He had his ordinary job, doing ordinary things."
(Camera zooms out, we see Steven Seagal in a lab coat and hair net at the grill. He weighs at least 275 pounds.)
Guy in a navy blue suit with five o'clock shadow and aviator sunglasses who is obviously a cop or agent of some kind: "Jack, we really need your help on this one. These guys are coming in, and they're coming strong."
Parcetti, played by Seagal: "I'm just a cook ...."
Guy in a navy blue suit with five o'clock shadow and aviator sunglasses who is obviously a cop or agent of some kind: "You're just a sissy, that's all."
Woman in a black pant suit probably purchased at Dress Barn or other low budget store because she is obviously a cop: "That's not the Parcetti I knew. What happened to you?"
Narrator: "But then Jack Parcetti's ordinary life blew up in his face."
(Scene shows an Asian woman in her 20's being escorted off a playground by masked thugs in Karate uniforms. Asian woman is put in the back of a black sedan. The sedan is parked inside of a garage. Daylight shot of garage from exterior, camera zooms out to show that the garage is attached to a modern looking house up in the hills of California wine country, with a rock garden, Asian sculptures, and zebras in the massive yard. Camera than shows a stop watch clicking backwards, when it hits one, camera zooms out to show the house, garden, zebras, sculptures, and vineyards blown up with a massive fire bomb. Fade to black ....
Later that night, police tape is surrounding the once peaceful area. We see the blue and red flashing lights of police cars, small fires are still spewing here and there, including a shot of a zebra carcass being consumed by fire. We see the guy in a navy blue suit and the woman in a pant suit looking over the crime scene. The navy blue suit man throws up, the woman is crying. We see a photo on the ground, edges burnt by fire. It's a photo of the Asian woman that was blown up .................... she is with someone in the photo, but the face of the other person is covered by dirt. The wind blows, revealing the face of the person with the Asian woman ..................... it's Jack Parcetti.
Shot goes back out to show the yellow crime tape, we see those skilled hands of the grill man, they rip the tape right in half. Parcetti walks up to the cops.)
Parcetti: "Was it them?"
Guy in navy blue suit, still wearing sunglasses even though it's dark: "Yeah. It was them sickos. Those thugs make me sick." (Man barfs again.)
Woman cop in sensible pant suit: "Jack, this is real bad."
Parcetti: "Bad? It's only gonna' be bad for those monsters who killed my wife and zebras."
Narrator voice: "And Jack Parcetti will prove that he is no ordinary man at all."
(camera zooms in on the skilled hands of Jack Parcetti. They wipe the food off the knives, then sharpen the knives. The hands take the spatula and flip the last of the pancakes on the grill. Then those hands wipe off the spatula and sharpen the edges of the spatula. The hands rip off the lab coat, revealing a black trench coat and camouflage pants with tactical belts and straps. The knives are affixed to the belts and straps. The spatula is put into a shoulder holster. We see a full view of Jack Parcetti, he pulls of the hair net. Then, those skilled hand reach down and grab a pancake. Parcetti puts the pancake in his mouth. The whole friggin' pancake.)
Parcetti, still chewing the pancake, begins to talk right at the camera, spewing pancake bits right at the camera: "I'm coming for you, Mr. Chang."
(Parcetti than takes a stack of pancakes and puts them in his coat. Foggy mist arises from the ground. Parcetti disappears into the mist. The mist fills the screen, and blood red calligraphy lettering shows up on screen, revealing the name of the movie)
This fall, Steven Seagal is Jack Parcetti, Vincent D'Onofrio is Detective Tommy McHammond, and Toni Collette is Agent Susan Harper. With Maggie Cheung as the Asian wife of Parcetti and David Carradine as Mr. Chang.
While the script is too long to post, I will include a draft copy for the theatrical trailer of the film.
(camera is zoomed in on hands working at a grill, the hands are somewhat worn, somewhat large, and are skilled in the arts of the grill. The hands are slicing peppers and dicing onions with knives, flipping meats over with spatulas, and using a blow torch to light up a Cherries Jubilee cream dessert).
Narrator Voice: "Jack Parcetti was just an ordinary man. He had his ordinary job, doing ordinary things."
(Camera zooms out, we see Steven Seagal in a lab coat and hair net at the grill. He weighs at least 275 pounds.)
Guy in a navy blue suit with five o'clock shadow and aviator sunglasses who is obviously a cop or agent of some kind: "Jack, we really need your help on this one. These guys are coming in, and they're coming strong."
Parcetti, played by Seagal: "I'm just a cook ...."
Guy in a navy blue suit with five o'clock shadow and aviator sunglasses who is obviously a cop or agent of some kind: "You're just a sissy, that's all."
Woman in a black pant suit probably purchased at Dress Barn or other low budget store because she is obviously a cop: "That's not the Parcetti I knew. What happened to you?"
Narrator: "But then Jack Parcetti's ordinary life blew up in his face."
(Scene shows an Asian woman in her 20's being escorted off a playground by masked thugs in Karate uniforms. Asian woman is put in the back of a black sedan. The sedan is parked inside of a garage. Daylight shot of garage from exterior, camera zooms out to show that the garage is attached to a modern looking house up in the hills of California wine country, with a rock garden, Asian sculptures, and zebras in the massive yard. Camera than shows a stop watch clicking backwards, when it hits one, camera zooms out to show the house, garden, zebras, sculptures, and vineyards blown up with a massive fire bomb. Fade to black ....
Later that night, police tape is surrounding the once peaceful area. We see the blue and red flashing lights of police cars, small fires are still spewing here and there, including a shot of a zebra carcass being consumed by fire. We see the guy in a navy blue suit and the woman in a pant suit looking over the crime scene. The navy blue suit man throws up, the woman is crying. We see a photo on the ground, edges burnt by fire. It's a photo of the Asian woman that was blown up .................... she is with someone in the photo, but the face of the other person is covered by dirt. The wind blows, revealing the face of the person with the Asian woman ..................... it's Jack Parcetti.
Shot goes back out to show the yellow crime tape, we see those skilled hands of the grill man, they rip the tape right in half. Parcetti walks up to the cops.)
Parcetti: "Was it them?"
Guy in navy blue suit, still wearing sunglasses even though it's dark: "Yeah. It was them sickos. Those thugs make me sick." (Man barfs again.)
Woman cop in sensible pant suit: "Jack, this is real bad."
Parcetti: "Bad? It's only gonna' be bad for those monsters who killed my wife and zebras."
Narrator voice: "And Jack Parcetti will prove that he is no ordinary man at all."
(camera zooms in on the skilled hands of Jack Parcetti. They wipe the food off the knives, then sharpen the knives. The hands take the spatula and flip the last of the pancakes on the grill. Then those hands wipe off the spatula and sharpen the edges of the spatula. The hands rip off the lab coat, revealing a black trench coat and camouflage pants with tactical belts and straps. The knives are affixed to the belts and straps. The spatula is put into a shoulder holster. We see a full view of Jack Parcetti, he pulls of the hair net. Then, those skilled hand reach down and grab a pancake. Parcetti puts the pancake in his mouth. The whole friggin' pancake.)
Parcetti, still chewing the pancake, begins to talk right at the camera, spewing pancake bits right at the camera: "I'm coming for you, Mr. Chang."
(Parcetti than takes a stack of pancakes and puts them in his coat. Foggy mist arises from the ground. Parcetti disappears into the mist. The mist fills the screen, and blood red calligraphy lettering shows up on screen, revealing the name of the movie)
This fall, Steven Seagal is Jack Parcetti, Vincent D'Onofrio is Detective Tommy McHammond, and Toni Collette is Agent Susan Harper. With Maggie Cheung as the Asian wife of Parcetti and David Carradine as Mr. Chang.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Things have been quiet around here lately.
In order to fill the void that my long absence has left in your hearts, I present to you a new feature to the site -- the "Government Holiday Movie Review." The premise of the Review is that every government holiday, I will dive in to at least one, possibly more, movies and review them for your reading pleasure.
"Why the Government Holiday?" you might ask. Seeing as how I am now a private citizen working in a private industry, I work roughly 266 days a year. That's five days a week, excluding Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Hamburglar's Birthday, and America Day.
However, my wife and her family happened to be employed with government agencies, which means they work roughly 112 days a year. Thus, whenever a holiday like Martin Luther King Jr. Day rolls around, they pack up and head off to Las Vegas for some days. It's especially awesome when they take the "Use it or Lose It" vacation and are gone for like three weeks. Although I still have to work, I'm in essence on a vacation -- a vacation away from some of the day-to-day responsibilities of marriage, such as shaving, helping with the dishes, and wearing pants around the house.
For instance, this last Government Holiday, I ate four meals directly from the paper sack the meals were delivered to me in. No dishes there. In addition, I ate all of those meals on the comforts of my sweet recliner, sans pants, with the sauces of the meats I ordered dangling to my beard. That's living!!!
Anyway, these Government Mandated Vacations also give me an especial chance to restore the balance of masculinity in the ASmith household. You see, there is a very real balance of man and woman in every established home. The homes collectively make up the balance of man/woman in the universe. Thus, whenever one house tips to far left or right, the entire fabric of the universe is in jeopardy of being rent asunder. (I made a few chaos theory style calculations. My home becoming too feminine essentially tips the scales just enough to set the rest of the world into commotion).
To paraphrase Liam Neeson in Batman Begins, whenever a forest grows too wild, a purging fire is natural and ineviatble. Justice is balance. For every time my wife regales me with how that fascinating Twilight vampire soft-core novel is, I get to buy tickets to a monster truck rally. For every Kiera Knightly movie period film, I get to watch a period piece about Vietnam.
The Government Holiday give me a chance to restore the balance to our home, thereby restoring the male-to-female balance ratio back to its proper 1:1 setting, and thereby saving the very universe.
On to the first review:
In order to fill the void that my long absence has left in your hearts, I present to you a new feature to the site -- the "Government Holiday Movie Review." The premise of the Review is that every government holiday, I will dive in to at least one, possibly more, movies and review them for your reading pleasure.
"Why the Government Holiday?" you might ask. Seeing as how I am now a private citizen working in a private industry, I work roughly 266 days a year. That's five days a week, excluding Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Hamburglar's Birthday, and America Day.
However, my wife and her family happened to be employed with government agencies, which means they work roughly 112 days a year. Thus, whenever a holiday like Martin Luther King Jr. Day rolls around, they pack up and head off to Las Vegas for some days. It's especially awesome when they take the "Use it or Lose It" vacation and are gone for like three weeks. Although I still have to work, I'm in essence on a vacation -- a vacation away from some of the day-to-day responsibilities of marriage, such as shaving, helping with the dishes, and wearing pants around the house.
For instance, this last Government Holiday, I ate four meals directly from the paper sack the meals were delivered to me in. No dishes there. In addition, I ate all of those meals on the comforts of my sweet recliner, sans pants, with the sauces of the meats I ordered dangling to my beard. That's living!!!
Anyway, these Government Mandated Vacations also give me an especial chance to restore the balance of masculinity in the ASmith household. You see, there is a very real balance of man and woman in every established home. The homes collectively make up the balance of man/woman in the universe. Thus, whenever one house tips to far left or right, the entire fabric of the universe is in jeopardy of being rent asunder. (I made a few chaos theory style calculations. My home becoming too feminine essentially tips the scales just enough to set the rest of the world into commotion).
To paraphrase Liam Neeson in Batman Begins, whenever a forest grows too wild, a purging fire is natural and ineviatble. Justice is balance. For every time my wife regales me with how that fascinating Twilight vampire soft-core novel is, I get to buy tickets to a monster truck rally. For every Kiera Knightly movie period film, I get to watch a period piece about Vietnam.
The Government Holiday give me a chance to restore the balance to our home, thereby restoring the male-to-female balance ratio back to its proper 1:1 setting, and thereby saving the very universe.
On to the first review:
Shoot 'Em Up scored a victory by the title alone. This testosterone movie lets you know right off the bat what this thing is about, just from the poster. Clive Owen will shoot stuff, mainly people, while being accompanied by Monica Belucci. They both are being chased by Paul Giamatti who will, as implied in the title, be shooting things up.
For the record, Clive Owen is awesome. This is not an opinion. My Geometry 1320 professor proved that Clive Owen was awesome through a modified Euclidean postulate. No disputing Euclid's equations, no disputing Clive Owen. I could watch Clive Owen eat and be excited by his raw, almost primeval, presence of man. In fact, this movie features several scenes of Owen inexplicably eating carrots. Yep. Carrots. He even uses these carrots to murder several people.
The plot (I use that term loosely for a film titled Shoot 'Em Up) starts right at action time. In addition, Monica Belucci is in it. I can't understand a word she says. She was probably saying some pointless jibberish, like a grocery list, and her stunning emotion had me captivated.
Overall, this movie followed the exact Man Formula -- hard and gritty, yet handsome, lead male character, beautfiul female character, high body count, plus a few memorable verbal quips and barbs. A man movie features at least one "zoom in real close, the dude's about to say something --- OH SNAP!!!" scene. This movie featured three such scenes. However, due to said language of the lines in those scenes, and that Jedboy is a family friendly website, I will abstain from those quips.
Man Scale: 9.2 of 10. Mitigating Factors: Paul Giamatti's character being too scattered -- is he a genius, or is he a family man, is he evil? What's his deal? A true man flick doesn't have such character nuances.
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