What was THAT?

Boy, what the hell have they done to the Oscars show?!

What was with that line up on stage, where they all just stood there, and once they lost they had to slink quietly off the stage and go back to their seats? What happened to the joy of sitting with your spouse or kids, holding excitedly to each other as the "....and the Oscar goes to..." is read aloud? Where was that happy run to the stage, passing people in the aisle, kissing, shaking hands?

I noticed it was just the 'technical' awards, like costumes and make-up, that got shafted.

Worse, how about the people how won and then got to walk all of FIVE FEET from their seat, and make a speech they worked on for perhaps their entire life, standing IN the aisle, all while looking at the back of half the audiences heads??

What a shitty show. Only thing that made it even PASSABLY interesting was that, for once, nobody REALLY knew who would win. (except for Jamie Fox for RAY)

Basball ben beddy beddy good to me

This weekend we had so much baseball I never had a moment to try and work on fixing the shower in our bathroom.

We had baseball pictures at 12:30, then went to the field and played until 4:30. We were back out on Sunday at 2:00 and stopped at 5:45, and we would have played longer if our catcher hadn't got clipped by a foul ball and bruised his arm.

I had someone over to look at the shower and the more he talked the more I convinced mysself that I can do the repairs myself.

But with baseball practise three days a week, or first game is Saturday, and then two more nights each week after that, finding the time is going to be hard.

But I do like coaching. The kids are great, and I even know their names already, and it's been only 4 weeks. Usually it's closer to the end of the season before I can name them all.

How to Make a Crummy Movie

I was going to do "Craps: Lesson Three" but with all this talk about movies, with the Oscars coming up, I thought of this:

Why are there so many stupid movies out lately?

I was reading about CURSED, the “new” Wes Craven movie. I used to like his stuff. Now, after reading about this, I think I’ll be skipping even the copying of the DVD.

It sounds like CURSED is one of those movies made by committee. What crap.

They write a script, start filming, then stop in the middle. Clueless executives, who should not be trusted to leave their homes much less be making decisions about art or entertainment, get involved. They piss all over it, like a dog marking their territory. They decide to rewrite the whole thing. Then they start up filming again, with different characters, different relationships, different story lines for crap sake. Then they try to cut all the pieces together and make something whole out of several different halves.

Then after all that what do they do? They cut out all the stuff that makes a horror film a horror film, and turn it into a PG-13 piece of nothing. I mean, really, why would anybody want to see somebody get killed by a monster in a movie about people getting killed by monsters? That would be ridiculous, wouldn't it, sort of like putting explicit sex scenes in a porno film.

Something else about the PG-13 rating too. They're so worried about piracy killing the movie industry? I actually WISH those little bastards were staying at home pirating movies instead of watching them in public with us grownups. I'm ready to start passing out blank DVDs to every stupid kid I see.

You ever tried to watch a horror movie with a bunch of teenage kids who have nothing to do and so go to a movie they know nothing about just because their friends are going? You sit there waiting for the movie watching 20 minutes of freakin’ TV commercials, then you spend the rest of the night gritting your teeth trying not to punch some asshole kid that won't shut up through the whole god damn movie.

I've said this before about "the movie going experience" and how eventually I will have no reason tho go out to a movie theatre? This is one more reason why.

Word to those stupid Clueless Executives; you want to save movies, give people a reason to go again. PG-13 horror movies ain't gonna do it.

A week ago Sunday night, my daughter was out to a friend’s house. We asked her to be home by 10:00pm, not too unreasonable for a school night. She has school the next day, and we work. Not a hard thing to understand.

By 11:00 she had already called us several times to ask if she could stay another ten minutes to finish watching a movie, just another ten minutes, just another ten minutes. By 11:45 she was still not home.

When she finally arrived home at midnight, we tried to explain all the things we felt we needed to explain about why she has to come home on time, like it’s late, it’s a school night, etc. She said she was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again.

So of course, this past Sunday, what happened?

THE SAME THING.

You’d have thought that what went on the weekend before would still be relatively fresh in her mind, that she would be somewhat more aware of the time so the same thing would NOT happen. But it did. Only this time, each time we called her, it was, “I’m leaving now.” So ten minutes later, when she was not home after what should have been a six minute drive, we called her again. “I’m just leaving NOW.” Ten minutes later, with thoughts in our minds of her car wrapped around a pole thirty feet from our house, we called her again. “Okay, I promise, I’m leaving right NOW.”

She finally walked in at 1:30am

So what do you do? How do you get through to them? She says she’s sorry, but it’s like she just didn’t listen to us.

Do you try to reason with them? It’s very hard to do that at 1:30am when you have to be up again in six hours and when you can barely keep your eyes open but you’re so mad and the adrenaline is pumping through your body with the force of a fire hose.

Do you yell at them? After you’ve repeated yourself for the third time, they just turn their ears off and stop listening, then they get that snotty attitude, which makes all of it even worse.

Do you take away stuff? I took away her car, but now I have to get up at 6:00am to drive her to school. I could take away her phone, her TV, her computer but would that actually solve anything?

I know this is nothing new. I know that similar questions come up every day and every hour in nearly every single house where a teenager lives. I know these are not new questions that no other parent has ever thought of before!

I keep telling myself, in the long run, in the BIG Picture, staying out until 1:30am watching a movie at a friend’s house on a school night is not the worse thing she could be doing. I just have to think back to things I myself may have done at that age. I try to keep it perspective. She’s a good kid, I do trust her, she isn’t stupid.

How do you get them to understand how worried sick you get when they say they are on the way home but don’t show up on time?

I know I can’t be there to protect her 24 hours a day. I know I have to start treating her as an adult more, I know that we have to start letting go and trusting her, as hard as that may be, to be careful when she is out. But it is difficult. As all parents know, it is EXTREMEMLY difficult. Nearly head-explodingly difficult.

Why is there no manual when it comes to kids?

Kids. Love 'em or eat 'em.

Kids.

You want to have them, then as they grow, you kind of bang your head against a wall wishing maybe, just maybe, if you asked real nice, that the hospital would take 'em back. Kids can drive you more insane than the one-night stand who turns out to be raving pyro psychotic.

Kids. One minute you love them to pieces, then the next minute you can understand why hamsters eat their young. It’s just easier to do that than having to deal with them as they grow into teenagers.

It's carnival time

It's carnival time again!

A local church is putting on their annual carnival, a pretty good one, with lots of decent rides and a food tent where they play music and auctioned off 'gift baskets,' and even a signed picture of Candice Bergan. The kids have a blast going on the rides, walking around with theirs friends, and my wife and I can sit, eat, and watch people as they go by.

Funny how many years we've been going to that carnival and how rare it is that we see anyone we know or even recognize. So many people I've never seen before, where do they all come from?

Last night we did recognize some people. We went to eat with a couple of friends Don and Amy, and we were sitting in the food tent, talking . We noticed these other people sit down at the table across from us, two older couples that we remember from last year.

Why do we remember them? Because one was sort of a mismatched couple, a short, Hispanic guy with a long grey mullet and a black muscle shirt (which I swear he wore last year) and an old lady who could have been his grandmother, pounding back the wine. Of the other two, both were also old but you could tell the lady tried to do everything she could to try and not look look old, to the point where it was sort of sad. And the four of them were plastered, last year, and again last night.

Each of them must have had 12 beers apiece, except for the lady who was drinking the wine. Last year she was so drunk she was dancing and weaving while holding her wine cup and we wondered how she could be 'standing' so long.

Last night she went to get two drinks and as she returned she sort of got lost. We were watching her go one way, then the other, then back again, looking around for her mullet man, the one beer in her hand tipping and spilling as she drank from the wine cup. She was just trying to do too many things at one time; drink her wine, carry a beer, walk, and try to find her seat. Finally she found the right aisle and as she started getting closer to us I told Don he'd better move over, she weaving again and I wouldn't have been surprised if she dumped her beer on him as she passed by.

She made it to her seat but not after she leaned over us, bumping into our table, using it as a guide as she walked past. She barely got back.

What scares me is I wonder which one drove home when they were done?

More space stuff

I read somewhere that Copernicus, the huge rayed crater on the Moon (it’s the most obvious crater on the side of the Moon that always faces us because the Moon is tidally locked to rotate at its orbital rate) is so large that if you were standing on it you would not know that you were in a crater. The horizon on the moon is only two miles away and Copernicus is almost 300 miles in diameter.

I also read that the horizon on the Earth is seven miles away.

Now, this is something I figure I could use all that fancy algebra I learned back in high school to figure out something about the sizes of the Earth and the Moon.

But I don’t know what that something is and now I don’t remember a bit of the math!

A Happier Birthday!

One Martian year = 687 Earth days

If I lived on Mars I'd be 24!

Craps: Lesson Two

As a beginner, it's first best to stick with the basics of the game. We will cover the most popular bet on the Craps table which follows the basic flow of the game. The bet is called the "Pass Line."
Here is the "in a nutshell" description of the pass line bet: When the "shooter" rolls a 7 or 11 on the first throw (The Come-out roll) it is referred to as a "natural" and an automatic win. On the other hand, if 2, 3 or 12 rolls, it is called, "craps" and you lose your Pass Line bet. Any other number (4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10) becomes your "Point." You win if the "Point" repeats before 7 rolls, and you lose if 7 shows before your "Point" is made.

Next: The FIELD bet!

Coming soon: Plasma vs LCD TV!

Weekend Update

It's Monday. Back to work day. Seems like the weekend went by too fast (don't they all?)

I have to say, we did have a good one. We went out to eat Friday night, the Spouse and I. We ate outside, near a huge water fountain. We had fun. It was kind of cool out but we had coats and we had a good time. The server was a nice kid who was always asking if we wanted anything else, never rushed us. I know he was just looking for a good tip, but hey, when I get treated like that, I don't mind leaving a good one.

My son and I went to the newly renamed "Dolphins Stadium" with some friends for the Marlins FanFest on Saturday. Always a blast. We got to go into the locker room; we each got to hit a few balls in the Team batting cage! We went up into the pressbox, and down into the tunnels under the stadium. Got posters, schedules, lots of free stuff. We saw Mike Lowell, Jeff Conine, Juan Pierre. Got Craig Minervini's autograph. Even got a good picture of him and my son, with Craig showing off that huge World Series ring. In fact, I got a LOT of good pictures, but when I got home and started to download them, I got some error message about unable to copy from destination, and POOF! all the pictures disappeared.

I WAS SO PISSED OFF!!

I tried for hours to recreate them, to recover them, anything, but nothing worked. They were gone.

I was ready to strangle someone. I am SO glad this did not happen to my Vegas pictures or I would not be sitting here today. My head would have exploded and I'd be dead.

@@@@@@

Saturday my daughter's "boyfriend" (!) came over and we bought tons of Italian stuff and had a big lunch. Garlic olives, meat pie, mushrooms, mozzarella cheese, roasted peppers, sausages on the grill, a crusty loaf of bread and a nice bottle of red wine. Nice!

Yesterday was fun too. Watched the Heat win against the Spurs. It was also our Wedding anniversary! We have been happily married for 22 years!! Yes, I can hardly believe that myself! But my wife has a bad cold so we got chicken wings (from Lefty's, where they have the BEST WINGS IN THE UNIVERSE!) and ate at home. Which was still a very nice time.

Well, I guess that brings us up to date for Monday. (I forgot to mention I washed all three cars yesterday. They were looking pretty scrap metalish) Tomorrow I will continue with the Craps lessons.

Keep your arms and legs inside the computer.

Craps: Lesson One

The game of craps is played with a set of two dice that are each six-sided. The dice are thrown by participants in the game in a clockwise rotation that gives all participants an equal chance at throwing the dice. The dice must be thrown from one side of the table to the other and almost all casinos will want the dice to hit the opposite back wall to insure no loaded dice or cheating. The results of each throw determine the payoffs on the table which will be examined later.

The most direct way to explain the game of craps is to talk about the flow of the game which revolves around "making the point".

The idea behind craps is to roll a "point" (4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10) on the come-out (first) roll and then after that point is established, the dice thrower (shooter) wants to roll that same point number before he/she rolls a 7.

If a 7 is thrown, then the point is lost and the process starts over. If the point is thrown, then the process also starts over again. (Payouts are made at that point also).

It's that simple and the game can be played by making only those bets that play "with the dice". Of course, there are many other bets to make in craps and craps rules involved with those bets which make the game so much fun...for the Casinos.

Some (funny) DVD news

Here's a bit of news I read that falls into the "well ain’t that just a dern SHAME?!” category. According to a story on the Wired website, Disney has stopped selling its EZ-D self-destructing, disposable DVD discs. Which is funny...I would have thought this technology would never have gotten off the drawing board much less actually being put on a store shelf.

The disposable DVDs (EZ-D) was marketed as a way to avoid late fees from movie rental shops. (Which now doesn't really apply anymore, since one of the biggest rental stores, Blockbuster, has dropped its late fees, and Nexflix, another rental service, never charged late fees to begin with) Once opened, the EZ-D can be played unlimited times in 48 hours. Then a chemical compound on the disc combines with oxygen, rendering the DVD unreadable after two days. The expired disk can be thrown away.

Apparently the company who developed this technology was recently sold to Atlanta-based Convex Group, which, strangely enough, plans to continue releasing content in this format.

"We believe wholeheartedly in the platform," said Dawn Whaley, executive vice president of the Convex Group. "I don't think we would have acquired a company if we didn't think it would be successful."

Excuse me, but would YOU hire this jack-ass?

These discs just never sold. Never. Nobody wants them.

Who wants to buy -- for about $7 -- a product that self-destructs? Especially when the price for a regular, non-self-destructing DVD is only a few bucks more?

Environmentalists also criticized the company, charging that the used product would lead to unnecessary waste in landfills.

So the company came up with a way the discs could be packed up and sent off to a special recycling facility to be recycled.

Are you kidding? If a customer is too lazy to return DVDs to a rental store, why on Earth would they take the time to send the expired DVDs to a recycling center?

This was just a bad idea. The current DVD works wonderfully. The ‘war’ between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray is WAY more important than this stupid thing. I think they should spend their time coming together on a HD disc rather than screw around with this useless disposable technology.

Good bye ENTERPRISE

Once again a show that I like has been cancelled. On Wednesday UPN announced it was canceling “Star Trek: Enterprise”, and that Friday, May 19, 2005 would be the series finale.

"Star Trek has been an important part of UPN's history, and Enterprise has carried on the tradition of its predecessors with great distinction. The creators, stars and crew of Star Trek: Enterprise ambitiously and proudly upheld the fine traditions of the Star Trek franchise. We are grateful for their contributions to the legacy of Trek and commend them on completing nearly 100 exciting, dramatic and visually stunning episodes. All of us at Paramount warmly bid goodbye to Enterprise, and we all look forward to a new chapter of this enduring franchise in the future."

Well, I got two words for them, and the second word is “...you!”

What started as just “Enterprise,” and (unfortunately) ends as “Star Trek: Enterprise” had just begun to get even better this year. Of course it takes time for any show to find its footing; even “ST: The Next Generation” took a good two and a half seasons to start to really click. And this was the season “Enterprise” was finally really starting to kick in, where I was actually once again looking forward to seeing each episode.

Some people have suggested mothballing anything Star Trek for a couple of years. What a mistake that would be! All that will do is give people time to become invested even more in new show like “BattleStar Galactica,” “Andromeda,” or any of the other variations of “Stargate,” not to mention movies like “Star Wars.” Put Star Trek away for a few years and most people probably won’t care much about a new show all that much, no matter HOW much you LOVE Star Trek.

I heap a huge share of blame for its cancellation right on top of the heads of Berman and Braga.

Berman and Braga have slowly screwed the entire franchise right into the ground. Berman lost his direction when he no longer had to answer to Majel Barrett-Roddenberry and her watchdog efforts.

Among other things, Star Trek was about its own historical consistency, and once Berman (and Braga) decided that the back-story for Trek should now be considered nothing more than a lot of wind, the stories suffered.

Berman and Braga consider their own perception and input to be the be-all, end-all, and somehow fail to realize that, as flawed as Roddenberry's physics might be, you don’t screw around with a formula that works and expect to get the same results.

I’m going to miss “Enterprise.” I hope that this is a wake up call to the Paramount producers and execs.

More on the Past

Speaking of NOLD, one of my first DVD purchases was the Elite special version of "Night of the Living Dead." The DVD starts off with one of the most evil (and ultimately funny) practical jokes I've ever seen: the film begins with a print so lousy that it defies description: it's horribly damaged, with tons of jump-cut splices, spots and scratches; it's barely in focus and it sounds like crap.

It has that that distinctive piece-of-shit, flea market-tenth-generation pirate video feel....and it stays that way for just long enough for your heart to rise into your throat as your blood pressure starts to rise, and you begin to feel pissed with the thought that the rest of the disc is going to be more of the same....when suddenly the Elite logo breaks through the screen, then fades out to reveal the THX logo, and you breathe a sigh of relief as the film proper begins in an infinitely better transfer, pristine in quality, made directly from the original negative.

Apparently it's a joke playing off the release history of the film. Years ago NOLD got a bad rap for being a crummy movie due to all the crappy prints that exist of it. People made copies of copies, passed it around, and this is a nod to that.

All I know is that is it worked. It pissed me off the first time I saw it. But then I laughed my ass off.

My Second Love

The other day we were talking about DVDs and tapes and home theaters, and I was telling my kids about when video tape first came out for the consumer.

We had just gotten married and it was all brand new to me. In the middle of 1983 we bought our first VHS VCR as a wedding present to ourselves. I thought the whole thing sounded kind of interesting, but I had no real concept of what it could do. It was a Panasonic, one where you put the tape into the cartridge-thing that popped up from the middle of the machine, and you'd slam it down like you'd slam a car door. I was told VHS was the way to go over Beta (he was right!) and it cost me over $500. Along with the VCR we bought a color TV that was over $600, so when he asked if I wanted to buy "Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn" for only $40 I thought what the hell.

From the very first moment I put that tape in, pressed PLAY, and I saw those first words as they floated up on my very own TV set, and this MOVIE started playing JUST for ME while I was sitting in my very own living room instead of some public movie house, well, my eyes lit up, an evil smile creeped across my face, and I was HOOKED baby!

Michelle's Video had just opened near my apartment. It was a little storefront, and seemed like it had maybe 200 tapes all together. The shelves were arranged around the outside walls, and there was one desk in the middle of the place. It was a rather plain store, looking into the store from the outside and you'd have passed them right by. There was no restroom, and this was way before they sold candy, popcorn, magazines, tapes, phone cards, or any of the other piles of crap every store in existence is clogged with today.

They rented tapes and that was it. I do remember a few posters along the walls. One I especially remember was one for “Revenge of the Jedi" which I'm sure would be worth a small fortune today!

This was the store where I found "Night of the Living Dead", a movie legend that I had heard about my entire life, but never thought I’d ever see...until I held it in my HAND!

More later...