My high school yearbook picture from Grade Nine, Georgetown District High School, Georgetown, Ontario, 1971-72. Holy shit.
And yes, that’s the same Sharon Barclay who, a few years earlier, won the Grade 6 spelling bee because I forgot the period in Sault Ste. Marie and she didn’t.
LOL!
It was this past Tuesday, September 19th, and I forgot all about it.
So here you are.
One day, while sailing the seven seas, a look-out spotted a pirate ship, and the crew became frantic.
Captain Bravo bellowed for his red shirt. The First Mate quickly retrieved the captain’s red shirt, and, after donning the shirt, the captain led his crew into battle and defeated the pirates.
Later on, the look-out spotted not one, but two pirate ships. The captain again howled for his red shirt and once again vanquished the pirates.
That evening, all the men sat around on the deck recounting the day’s triumphs, and one of them asked the captain: “Sir, why did you call for your red shirt before each battle?”
The captain replied: “If I am wounded in the attack, my crew won’t notice my bleeding and will continue to fight, unafraid.” All of the men sat in silence and marveled at the courage of their captain.
As dawn came the next morning, the look-out spotted not one, not two, but TEN pirate ships approaching. The rank and file all stared at the captain and waited for his usual request.
Captain Bravo calmly shouted: “Bring me my brown pants!”
On Saturday night CBC ran the recent reimagined remake of ‘The Time Machine’ based on/inspired by the HG Wells novel of the same name.
No real story was told in the making of this film.
cf my recent post on War of the Worlds
blah blah lousy movie blah blah planet of the apes blah blah nice cg blah blah 1970’s Doug McClure Edgar Rice Burroughs rubber monster suit monsters blah blah what the fuck blah blah morlocks or orcs blah blah oh come on blah blah planet of the apes again blah blah nice try but jeezes blah blah I can’t believe I watched the whole thing
I promise my next post will be something less of a downer. No, really. I seem to be moaning a lot lately.
Well, I watched Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds” with Tom Cruise last night.
When I was a kid, I was a big fan of the 1953 “War of the Worlds“, and later, Orson Welles’ radio play, dramatised in 1975’s “The Night That Panicked America“.
I wanted to see this one at the cinema but never did. I wish I’d never seen it last night.
It was worse than then entire second season of “Doctor Who“ and “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” put together.
It had everything that was wrong and silly about Independence Day and Starship Troopers (and ripped off the designs for the aliens from both movies, for Christ’s sakes), and added the fact that Tom Cruise’s Ferrier character was an asshole, Tim Robbins was completely wasted, and the unholy mix-mash of references to both the original book (eg, red weed, badly used) and the 1953 movie (eg, the alien camera on the snake arm, unfulfilled).
One thing that really burnt my toast was that Ray and Rachel were always, everywhere, exactly where all the shit was coming down. Granted there was a lot of shit coming down all over the place but always?
Aliens from underground? TV news cameraman looting a crashed plane for TV dinners? A convenient path for the SUV to drive out of the plane-crash area? The son surviving the firestorm on the hill and getting to Boston all by himself? Fuck right off.
And why was it never established that the aliens were Martians? That’s half the cool about the book and old movie. Martians!
I’ve never really liked Senor Spielbergo movies (with a few exceptions). He’s too much like a film student in a candy store.
Sometimes a great notion…
As Porky Pig once said, “That’s all, folks.”
Coffee even hurts right now.
I have big wide windows that I love. I have them open all the time year round because I crave the fresh air, and I can’t control the heat in the wintertime; it’s forced water and it’s either on or off.
I have a big oscillating floor fan, that is neither oscillating nor on the floor, stuck in one side of the window blowing out, so that there is a nice wide flow of outside air coming in the the other side. Usually this is highly pleasant. Now it is not.
I also have a small desktop fan blowing at me when I sleep, which seized up last night. It probably only needs a little generic WD40, so no real worries - it’s happened before.
I lost a hard-drive (logical not physical) on one of my computers the other night and I thought I’d lost a bunch of important files (including story files and MP3s), but they’re okay - I just can’t use them right now. However, I need to spend a lot of time restoring the OS on that machine and it’s too goddamn hot to do it now. And seriously, Microsoft, what the fuck is wrong with you people? The COPY command in the Recovery Console won’t handle wildcards or directory copies, even if you use the fucking SET command to tell it to? It’s called the Recovery Console, not the “Fuck You, Fuck Your Files And Fuck The Horse You Rode In On Console”. Not “A Recovery Console for Windows 2000, Mr Gates? ‘Fast, Cheap, or Right, Pick Two’ Console”! It’s enough to make a body want to switch to a Mac or Linux. Jesus Christ on a fucking crutch.
Thank all the saints and angels for television. Cable television. And sudoku. And Freecell.
Anyhoo, I hope you’re all having a nice day. Drink plenty of water and don’t leave your children in a parked car with the windows rolled up, unless you really want to encourage Good Samaritans who have hammers and an urge to use them.
This came to me once when I was watching ‘Win Ben Stein’s Money.’
“I asked the porn-star/hooker for a box of videotapes but she gave me a case of DVD.”
1> ‘The Unit’ looks like a good show.
2> So does ‘Boston Legal’.
3> That poor kid in Detroit who the 911 operator told to stop fooling around with the 911 system…
4> I really should have been watching ‘Babylon 5′ years ago.
5> Dean Koontz’es’s book ‘From the Corner of His Eye’ is a good read, nicely constructed, even though hardly anything really plotty happens until about page 600.
6> ‘My Name is Earl’ gets funnier and funnier.
7> Venus Express!
8> I love this weather.
9> The last few episodes of ‘Battlestar Galactica’ have been kickass, except I missed it both times on Space this past weekend through bad TV viewing planning. I guess I need to take a course.
10> ‘Coronation Street’ is getting kinda wacky, but that’s good. It’s a little boring when things are normal.
11> Nancy Grace is a foul human being.
12> If I was taller, I could see farther in a crowd during an emergency.
Saw it on CityTV last night, missed it at the cinema.
What wonderful visualizations, what a treasure of a cast, what effort, imagination, and passion for such a crappy movie!
I kept going “Nice..wait…Nope.”
‘Van Helsing’, for what it was, was a much better movie.
Take a look at Roger Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary.
What it is is a compendium of movie archetypes, stereotypes, tropes (in a loose sense), and jokes based on all the former, that people have submitted to him over the years.
Some are funny, some are clever, some are interesting, but they’re all fun.
This is the longer archive.
Enjoy yourself, but be safe.