Hold up, wait a minute

Quick post before I get to bed, because 5:00 comes awfully early in the morning and I've got my first booking + ball game day tomorrow.

So, we'll just hit the highlights:

*Saw the movie 42 this weekend.  Well, most of it.  I had to jet out of the theater at what I assume was the ending in order to get the MMP on time.  Pretty good flick.  Harrison Ford was phenomenal.  I actually thought he was John Goodman for half the film.  I know you're thinking Harrison Ford looks nothing like John Goodman, and you're right.  But heck, this day and age, nothing surprises me any more.  He could have been John Goodman in motion-capture gear with a leaner CGI body.  Anyway, it took almost half the film and a couple patented Ford-grins before I remembered that Mr. Ford was supposed to be in this movie, and that he was supposed to be fantastic, and I realized that  yes, yes he was.

The rest of the film was...ok. I enjoyed it, it got an emotional response from me.  I loved the story, I liked the way they did Jackie's character, and that actor did a good job, but something seemed off about the film as a whole.  It felt like a collection of scenes that were from a great movie about Jackie Robinson, yet somehow it didn't come together to form a great movie about Jackie Robinson.  It had that awkward sense that it was too long, yet everything went by too quickly.  Which is usually just a case of trying to do too much in to little time.  Example: Jackie calls a young woman early in the film.  By they way they talk, I assume it's his wife.  Then he suddenly proposes to her.  Oh, okay. It was his girlfriend.  Next scene, they're married, and they're discussing their life together, and you realize you really know nothing about either of their characters or their relationship so it doesn't have the punch it ought to have.  Another great example: during an early spring training game, Jackie's wife goes to the restroom, not feeling well.  Another woman asks how she's doing, and she replies, "I'm sick.  Don't know why."  The other woman inquires, "When was the last time you had your monthly?"  Then there's a great moment where Jackie's wife lets the unspoken implication of the other woman's question sink in.

And then, apparently just to make sure that the men in the audience understand what's going on, the other woman adds "It might be that you're pregnant."  Then she leaves.

Next scene: it's next spring training, and they have a baby!

Again, I know they had a lot to cover, but everything flies by so quickly it's hard to get attached to anybody but Jackie and Harrison Goodman.  That said, the story of these two men as portrayed in the movie is excellent.

And it seems like all I talk about on here is movies these days.

*****************

In "Measurements and Conversion Tips" news: apparently 15 pounds is approximately equal to one hole on your belt.  Good to know!

*****************

I'm teaching an acting class.  It's for 4th through 9th grades, which is unusual but has been working surprisingly well.  The topic for the class was already selected before I signed on (one week before I started teaching).  We're using The Hunger Games as a entrance point into the discussion on tactics in acting.  For not having initiated the class or the idea and for not having read the source material until a few days before my first class. I think it's going really well!  It's become very character-oriented which has ultimately turned into a discussion of writing.  And if you know me at all, you know teaching/mentoring and writing are some of my very favorite things.  So teaching/mentoring about writing?  Awesome!  Unfortunately, this takes away my Saturday mornings, which was when I was supposed to catch up an hour or so of lost sleep during the week.  I'll find those hours somewhere, though.

******************

The Aeros are officially moving to Iowa.  This'll get its own blog eventually.  It was fairly obvious that this was coming.  Some saw the writing on the wall back in September.  I actually believed until about a month ago that they'd work something out.  Eventually, though, it became obvious that The Toyota Center had no interest in keeping the Aeros around.  And despite knowing it was coming, I will admit that Thursday was a bitter day.  It hurt.  And once I start talking about it, I know I'll get pretty ticked off again. Tonight, the Peoria Rivermen played their last game.  Fans stayed around 92 minuets after the game was over to applaud their team.  My heart goes out to 'em, but also knows we'll be in the exact same boat at some point in the next two months.

Calder Cup Playoffs 2013: One Last Mission.  Going to be an extremely bittersweet ride.

*******************

Bit of a downer, eh?  Well, I hate to end on an unhappy note, so check this out, courtesy the folks at Real Photobombs!

Come for the Wrath, Stay for the Titans!

I finally watched Wrath of the Titans just now.  Checked it out from my local library because I like movies that have people fighting giant monsters.  Saw the remake Clash of the Titans at the movie theater and it was fine.  Big, loud, dumb, but fun. And yes, I've seen the wildly imaginative original as well back when it was on TNT all the time.

Now I know what you're thinking.  I haven't seen that movie, but I want to know pretty much everything that happens without actually watching it.  

Gotcha covered, Home Slice.

The movie starts out with some narration that basically says "The last movie happened, and time has passed.  Oh, and Perseus' wife died."  Which I think only happened because she didn't want to be pegged for the rest of her career as the chick from the Titans movies, so she went to make classy films like Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.   Anyway, now Perseus lives as a simple fisherman with his son, Helius.  It's a good, quiet life, with no more adventures from meddling gods!  Until a meddling god shows up.  It's his father, Liam Neeson--or rather, Zeus, but really I just kept thinking of him as Liam Neeson throughout the film.  Liam says that people don't pray to the gods anymore, so the gods are all losing their power, which means that everything they've done will be undone, which means that Tartarus, the prison of the terrible titans (but basically just Kronos) is slowly coming undone.  Liam says that all the demons of Tartarus will invade earth, and that some already have, and that only Perseus can save everyone because...I don't know.  But Perseus says "No more monsters!  I want to live with my son and be happy!"  So Liam Neeson leaves.  Also, you learn that Perseus promised his wife as she was dying while delivering their son that Helius would never learn to use a sword.  Which makes sense, because Perseus is a warrior, and his woman was a warrior, so they don't want their son to learn to defend himself in a world with monsters because...I don't know. 

Down in the Underworld, Liam Neeson meets up with Poseidon and Ares and Hades to discuss how to stop Kronos from escaping.  However, Ares betrays them because he thinks Liam Neeson love Perseus more than him, and Hades betrays them because come on, when is Hades not the bad guy?  So Poseidon gets smacked around and Liam Neeson gets captured because Kronos needs to absorb what's left of Liam's divine power to finish escaping from Tartarus or something. 

Meanwhile, monsters are attacking earth, and what is supposed to be a chimera attacks Perseus' village.  I have to say that almost all the monsters in this film are pretty huge disappointments. The shaky camera angles that scream PANIC! PANIC! TERROR! make it really hard to see what's going on in any of the fight sequences, and when you do get a "clear" shot of a monster it either looks horrible or is an indistinguishable mess of fir, teeth, and drool--like the chimera.  Anyway, Perseus gets the chimera to set itself on fire and then goes to the temple to pray to Liam Neeson. But Liam doesn't show up, because he's captured, duh.  Fortunately Poseidon arrives, having escaped Ares and Hades by...I don't know.  He tells Perseus that he has to go find his son Agenor who is with Queen Andromeda and, if Agenor is worthy, to give him Poseidon's trident. Then Poseidon turns into a pillar of salt.  Or dies.  Or something.

Perseus rides his flying pony (yes, I know it's actually Pegasus) to Queen Andromeda's army, and everybody loves him because he killed the Kraken in the last movie.  Andromeda shows up and she's all happy to see him, and apparently they're old friends, and she's leading the army and she's all suited up for war, and you look at her and think "That looks far more like a Jane Bennett than a Queen Andromeda."  Then you IMDB it and realize that's because she is Jane Bennett.  And yeah, she's a twig.  There's no way she could possibly hold a sword if it weren't a prop. So you just call her Jane Bennett the rest of the movie.

Jane Bennett helps Perseus find Agenor, who's a scoundrel and a thief in the prison, and the three of them embark on a ship with some dispensable minor characters to find The Fallen One.  Perseus apparently decides that Agenor is worthy before he's even done anything, because he gives him the trident pretty freely, but that's good because that's what helps them find the hidden island where The Fallen One lived after he was...blah blah blah, they meet crazy old Hephaestus, who can never decide how to spell his name.  At first, you think Hephaestus is going all Gollum on them, but it turns out he's actually arguing with the creepy golden mechanical owl from the original Clash because...I don't know.  He pretty much tells them they're nuts for trying to go after Kronos, but then he sees Jane Bennett and says, "Hey, you remind me of Jane Bennett!"

Actually no, she looks like his wife Aphrodite, so he agrees to help them find the labyrinth, which is apparently a shortcut to the heart of Tartarus because...I don't know.  .

(By the way, this is the only time Jane Bennett is remotely useful in the entire film)

Oh, and they fought cyclopes.  I forgot to mention that.  The cyclopes looked terrible and for some reason they spoke a different language from everybody else.  But the one other woman on the adventure (Jane Bennett's friend) prayed to Ares, which was dumb because Perseus clearly told everyone "Don't pray to Ares or he'll show up and kill us."  So that's what Ares does to all of the expendable minor characters, proving the tried-and-true Law of Questing that you should never bring more than one woman on a quest.  Perseus, Agenor, and Jane Bennett escape into the labyrinth.  Boring stuff happens, and Perseus fights an extremely disappointing minotaur, and meanwhile Hades and Liam Neeson are talking, and Liam keeps calling Hades brother and says they should join forces, and Hades says he's scared, and Ares is a jerk to both of them.  And after Perseus gets separated from others, and after they decide the map that Hephaestus (the guy who built the frreakin' labyrinth) gave them was worthless, they somehow all find each other right on the doorstep to Tartarus just as Kronos has drained the last of Liam Neeson's power and is almost free.  So Ares tries to kill Liam Neeson, and Perseus is all, "Daddy!  Noooo!"  And Ares knocks him around.  And then Hades totally changes his mind and tries to help, so Ares smacks him around. And I don't remember if Jane Bennett gets smacked around here or not; she gets smacked around pretty much any time they're a reason to draw a sword, so they all kind of blend together. She does, however, try to cut Liam Neeson's chains with her sword, but fails miserably. Liam tells Perseus to use his power within, and then Perseus takes the sword and is all, "This is a man's job!"  And he hacks the chains down with no trouble at all. 

And then they escape.  Right to where Andromeda's army is setting up camp.

Liam Neeson is dying, and he tells Perseus he has to use the Ultima Keyblade to beat Kronos.  It's made up of the Thunderbolt of Zeus, the Trident of Poseidon, and Hades' Pitchfork, which I think needs a better-sounding name. And they have the pitchfork and the trident, but guess who has the thunderbolt?  Ruh-roh, it's Ares!  So Perseus prays to Ares to meet him far away from everybody else who could help him.  Jane Bennett and Agenor prepare the army to fight Kronos, and the lone cool-looking monster in the film shows up:  the Makhai. Apparently, they're not used very often in myth, and in the movie they're basically these two-torsoed death-warriors, fighting back-to-back and constantly spinning, cutting down soldiers in a circle as they plow through the army.  It's pretty creative and rad.  Jane Bennett even stabs one!  Then she gets thrown to the ground and is pretty much done. Agenor lights a bunch of stuff on fire, which doesn't do much.  Hades shows up and heals Liam Neeson, and the two of them show up and wave their hands around and blow the makhai to bits.

Meanwhile, Perseus and Ares fight.  Ares brought along Helius, and Perseus says "Don't hurt him!"  And Ares says "I'm not going to hurt him. I'm going to hurt you.  And make him watch."  Then he kisses Helius on the head because..I don't know. They fight, and Ares keeps smashing Perseus' head through stone columns and walls, causing Perseus to bleed slightly.  (See, now Perseus is fighting for his son, which makes his skull turn to adamantium)  Once Perseus is down for the count, Helius picks up a sword, and Ares turns his back on the hero to laugh at the kid.  When he turns back around--gasp!--Perseus has moved, and the good guy jumps on the bad guy (who looks like a hairy Ringo Starr, for the record), stabs him, and takes the thunderbolt.  Then he puts the three items together to form Voltron.

No, not really, they form the Ultra Spear of Light and Goodness. And off he goes on the flying pony.

Kronos shows up, and it turns out he's just a really big molten lava man.  Which is disappointing in ways I can't even begin to explain.  Liam Neeson and Hades hold him off for a while as they say the word "Brother" and the end of every single line.  "Come on, Brother!"  "Let's finish this, Brother!"  "The first strike is mine, Brother!"  "We're totally brothers, Brother!"  (In case you hadn't guessed, all is well in their world again)  Then they tick of Kronos, who sends a massive attack at them.  Liam Neeson pushes Hades out of the way and somehow absorbs most of the giant wave of black doom.  During the distraction, Perseus flies into Kronos' mouth, since apparently Kronos has to swallow the Ultra Spear because...I don't know.  Kronos explodes because...I don't know.  And everybody cheers.  Zeus dies and Hades says "Well, I've used all my power."  And then he leaves, because...I don't know.

Back in her tent, Jane Bennett is suddenly planning battle strategies in case there are more attacks, because apparently she missed the Lord of Darkness and Molten Lava blowing up.  She also took time to change and get completely beautiful again despite the fact that everybody else in the army is grimy and bloody from the war.  Perseus comes in and kisses her because...I don't know.

And Agenor calls himself Helius' uncle because...I don't know.

And Agenor tells Helius his nurse's name is Tiger.  And she and Helius both laugh at this because...I don't know.

And then Perseus finds Helius on a hill, and Helius says "I think it'll be great to go home and be a fisherman!"  And Perseus basically says, "You know we're never going back there."  Because...I DON'T KNOW!!!

So Perseus gives Helius a sword, and Helius says, "It's heavy!" And Perseus says, "Dude, if Jane Bennett can carry one of those things, you can."  And Helius says, "Yeah, you're right. I got it."

And then the movie is over.

So, this movie was really bad.  And I know you're saying, "Duh.  You watched Wrath of the Titans. But even for a bad movie, this was no good.   Story was boring, characters didn't make any sense, and the Creature Feature factor was a major disappointment.  They kept slamming the "fathers and sons" angle over your head.  I mean, if a guy who will admit to enjoying the original Titans remake and the first Ghost Rider movie says your sequel's got problems...well, your sequel's got problems.

So naturally, Clash of the Titans 3 is currently "in development."  Though I understand it's not exactly full-steam-ahead at this point, it is unfortunately too far away from "not at all in development."  Because I know me.  And I know at some point, I will likely be checking Math of the Titan from my local library.  Just out of curiosity.

In Which I Actually Say Some Nice Stuff About 3-D

Sunday night, I finally made it to the theaters to catch the newly remastered 3-D edition of Jurassic Park.  You might think it's a bit melodramatic to say "finally" after seeing a film on Sunday that was released the previous Friday, BUT after I tried unsuccessfully to see the movie on Friday night and twice on Saturday night, it felt like it was a long time coming. 

Like, sixty-five million years coming!

Or, you know, twenty years. 

Man, what a phenomenal film.  It really is a modern classic.  And as much as I hate to say this (and believe me, I hate to say this), the 3-D really makes it look sharper, crisper, and better than ever.  See, I generally hate 3-D, but that's because it's usually used as a gimmick, with shrapnel flying at the audience's face, monsters making scary faces up close and personal, or evil giant kings' eyeballs popping out for a cheap gross-out factor.  Given the choice, I will almost never pay the extra money to see a film in 3-D if there's a 2-D option. 

Of course, there wasn't in this case, and in the end I'm glad I saw it in 3-D because they really utilized the technology well.  I actually really love it when filmmakers use 3-D to give the film more depth and definition, to create a more realistic and engaging atmosphere without trying so hard to "jump out" at the audience.  I actually expected a lot of that from JP.  Lord knows there are plenty of opportunities.  However, they never really went for it.  They just used the 3-D to make the film look sharp, and it was beautiful. 

(Side note: another effective use of 3-D I've seen in theaters: Nightmare Before Christmas.  Just gorgeous.) 

I ended up going to the movie by myself mostly because, when you've got two kids and four jobs, you just can't go to movies when normal people go to movies very often.  Now, I wasn't out super-late...I mean, it was a 10:10 showing.  On a Sunday night. But I've been out later :-)  Nevertheless, the theater I was in was completely empty.  At one point in the movie, and older Japanese couple walked in, headed to the back, talked very loudly to each other for a few minutes, realized they were in the wrong theater (I guess), and then left.  I was the only person watching Jurassic Park in 3-D at 10:10 on Sunday night at this little movie theater.  And I will admit, my first thought was something along the lines of "Wow, it kinda sucks being here alone.  I really hoped the resurrection of one of my all-time favorite flicks would be more of an event."  Soon, however, I got past the pity-party and said, "You know, if you'd told eleven-year-old me that one day I would get a private screening of Jurassic Park in 3-D, I'd have thought that was pretty stinkin' awesome."  So I just went with that for the rest of the night :-)

As for the film itself, I don't know what to say about it.  It's great.  I picked up on a few plot points that are maybe just a bit sketchy, of course.  But I also found a lot of subtle nuances that I missed as a pre-teen that made the whole thing a lot more solid.  The critic in me also found some spots where shots were cut together or scenes edited a bit abruptly, but I can't tell if that was somewhat shoddy editing or if we just cut our films a little different in the early '90s. 

Man, it is so hard to think of this as an early-90's film.  It doesn't look it, it doesn't feel it, and while the effects have, in some areas, taken a backseat to the WETA's of today, I think in most places they actually hold up quite well. 

Hey, what was Malcolm even doing on the island?
LAWYERS: We are facing a $20 million lawsuit because of that worker who was eaten by Raptors.  We demand to be satisfied!
HAMMOND: It's all good. This mathematician has officially endorsed the park.
MALCOLM: Chaotician, John.
HAMMOND: Whatever.
LAWYERS: We are now satisfied!

Anyway, watching this movie again, I got a little bit sad that there'll never really be another movie like it.  It was so groundbreaking, so earth-shattering, that everybody wanted a piece of the action.  It had incredible creatures unlike anything we'd seen before as moviegoers.  And they were dinosaurs!  This movie brought dinosaurs to life!  I will say this movie probably changed the way that boys my age (all of us twenty-and-thirty-somethings now) thought about movies.  This movie blew us away.  It was like a literal representation of our dreams and the wildest corners of our imaginations projected on a larger-than-life screen.  We were enthralled, captivated, utterly and helplessly swept away in the adventure.  You can look back at the standards from your childhood--favorite movies, favorites TV shows, favorite songs, whatever--and there's always a nostalgia for them.  But JP is a movie that grown men still get stoked about, twenty years after seeing it in the theater. 

I guess this was sort of like my generation's Star Wars.  Minus the wildly-successful sequels, of course. 

And just like Star Wars, this is a movie that'll probably only be truly appreciated by those of us who lived in the era that produced it.  In another five years or so, Robbie will watch this movie with me, and yeah, he'll like it.  But he'll have seen so many special-effects-laden adventure flicks by that point that watching a robotic T-Rex head rip tires off an overturned jeep isn't going to be the same for him that it was for me.  Hopefully, as he grows older, he'll start to appreciate the clever writing, the storytelling, the ethical debates, the score, maybe even the movie's place in film history, but it'll probably never blow him away.  My generation still loves Star Wars, and some even obsess over it, but quite honestly a lot of the obsession in that instance has come from the post-film expansion of the universe.  Kids today still love it, but they love it more for the Clone Wars TV series than, say, the Ewoks or the Death Star. 

Now, it sounds awfully curmudgeonly to say something like "They just don't make 'em like that anymore," but...they really don't. We rely so heavily on the CGI effects now.  When we have monsters eat people, we have to see a lot more blood these days.  And the language in JP is remarkably tame compared to many PG-13 film you'd see today.  JP didn't just look good, but it was smart.  And while there are still films that are smart, clever, and exciting, and there always will be, for thousands of men (and women too, I'm sure, but I can't speak for that side of the table), there'll never be another Jurassic Park. 

Short answer: Just Because

So.

So?

You haven't blogged in a week.

Really?

Since Monday.

I blogged last Wednesday.

...you did?

Yeah.

Huh. Somebody told me it was last Monday.

Have you been talking to Sherri?

...maybe.

She's taken a few too many confetti eggs to the head lately.   

I see.  So, where were you last week?

Well, short answer: I was in tech.  Sort of.  As close to tech week as you get when my church does a production.

Ah, Easter show?

Yep.  Good Friday, technically.

And this is the script you mentioned in last week's post?

Yes.  It went over quite well.  I'm working with a buddy in the hopes of putting some original choral music to it and then seeing if we can get it published.  That's a highly competitive market, though, so who knows if anything will happen.  I will say I don't know if it fits too handily into the cookie-cutter "Choir Easter musical" category, so that's probably working against it.

Why do you say that?

Well, we performed it with music from a different Easter musical, and the whole thing was about an hour in length.  Now, I found a few places I want to trim down dialog, but that's still a little longer than usual, since most churches' pastors want to make some closing remarks that'll push twenty minutes or so and most Easter musicals are typically performed on Easter.  Plus, the scenes are a little longer than you usually find.  Most of the time, choir musicals are light on the drama and heavy on the music.  This one was closer to a 50/50 split.  If the music thing doesn't work out, I may one day just try to sell it as a straight play, but I think it'd be much more effective with songs as interludes.  The concept for the play--and really, it's an idea I took from one of my favorite J. C. G. plays, was that we covered all the scenes you usually cover in an Easter musical--you know, the triumphal entry, the Last Supper, the crucifixion--but you don't actually show any of those scenes.  Instead, you get them from another perspective.  For example, the scene of Jesus throwing out the moneylenders is relayed by a woman to her friend preparing for family coming for Passover, or Palm Sunday is seen from the perspective of the angels in heaven.  That was actually my favorite scene to write, at least conceptually.  The result is clearly not the best thing I've ever written, but it serves its purpose well.  And like I said, the crowd at my church loved it.  And these people have been through a lot of Easter musicals in their day.

Well that's good.  How was the rest of your Easter weekend?

Good, but busy.  You know, one day, when I'm not the Director of Children's Ministries any more, I'm actually going to get to sit through an Easter service. Instead, it's counting eggs, sorting eggs, hiding eggs.  Then we came home and had Kim's delicious, traditional Easter lunch.  Ham, green beans, mashed potatoes.  You know.

Boy howdy!  

Then I think I fell asleep briefly on the couch before heading out to the ball park for opening night.  Man, that was fun.  The park was rocking all night long.  There was a hailstorm at one point before the game, so we had to open the doors early and it cancelled the fly-over.  But things cleared up in time for fireworks at night.  And of course the home team won, big, against a pretty big rival with a lot of fans present.  All in all, just a great night. 

Of course, all the folks and all the activity made for a long night, and when I got home at 11:45 I thought to myself, "My 5:00 a.m. wake-up call is going to come awfully fast."  So of course, I couldn't fall asleep until 1:00. 

Why do you work 3 part-time jobs again?

I asked myself that very question recently, and the short answer is: because I love all of them.  The fact that we need the money helps, too.  But I really do love each of my jobs.  I'm blessed beyond belief right now.  Even though it's very difficult to make everything work most of the time, I believe it's good work, all of it.  In a way, every one of my jobs is some sort of outreach or service.  Everything I'm doing deals directly with people.  I mean, even at the ball park. There are those occasions where something I have a chance to say or do can absolutely make somebody's day--either a guest or one of my coworkers.  And that's the sort of thing I live for.  Don't get me wrong, hanging out and watching the games is great, too.  But really, I love the chance to make someone's day. 

Take our performance this morning, for example.  We were crammed into a tiny classroom in a community building in the 5th ward.  This is poverty.  This is, "I didn't know this still happened in America"-level poverty.  We were told that 30 percent of the kids at the preschool (in the community center) come from homes with no electricity and 20 percent come from houses without water.  Driving to and from the performance, you could see homes with holes in windows, holes in walls, holes in roofs.  And this is reportedly much better than the way it was only ten years ago.  The room we were in was too small and the A.C. wasn't working, or wasn't on, or didn't exist, I don't know.  It was hot.  We were sweating like crazy the whole show.   It was uncomfortable.  And I'm used to uncomfortable, because let's face it, I've been in a lot of touring shows.  But this one was pretty miserable.  Afterward, a couple of the kids came up to give our webbed-footed ballerina a hug.  Then, she was mobbed by huggers.  Shortly thereafter, kids moved from her to the gabby goose standing nearby. Then these kids got it in their heads that they should hug all of us.  Now the ballerina's a given; that's not unusual at any school we go to.  And the goose is also very pretty, so that happens from time to time, too.  And honestly, I can understand hugging the gentle, motherly dog character, too.  But the horse?  And myself?  (A military frog; also the only boy in the show)  Hasn't happened before today.  But these kids were collecting all the hugs they could get.  And I wondered how many of these kids get hugs at home every night.  I'd put money that there are more than a couple who don't.  Today, we filled a need in their lives.  Not a need for entertainment, but a starvation for love.

Now, yeah, that's an extreme example.  Most days, I don't get a chance to hug little kids who don't have lights or flushing toilets in their homes.  But whenever I teach, whenever I perform, whenever I greet folks or chat with out-of-towners about Houston, or the Juice Box, or baseball in general, then I'm doing what I'm supposed to do.  And not just what I'm hired to do.  What I was made to do. 

Well.  That got deep.

Yeah, well.  I recently saw Olympus Has Fallen, do you want to talk about that instead?

How was it?

Eh.  It was fine.  There was lots of face-stabbing.

Face-stabbing?

Yeah. Seems like an odd thing to have as a motif, but there was quite a bit of our hero stabbing terrorists in the head.  That was just sorta how he rolled.  

That's disgusting.

They did take over the White House. 


Anything else you'd like to add?

Um, just thanks to the four or five people who check this blog regularly.  And thanks to anybody who saw that this was a longish post and read the whole thing anyway.


All right.  Until next time, then, The Truth Fights Like a Panther.

Hippos are more fierce.


Fine, but the truth doesn't fight like a hippo.  It fights like a panther.  

You know that panther isn't an actual species of cat, right?  It's a variant of one of several other large predatory cats.  

Why are you being mean?

Why are you being willfully ignorant?

How do you know I'm not referring to "panther" as the legendary multicolored creature ridden by Dionysus in Greek myth?

Are you?

....no.

Thought not.  Hey, chin up, buddy.  Panthers are still fierce.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Thanks.