Celebration III pics coming later this evening

I know, they've been promised the last several days but we didn't get Lisa's photos back until yesterday afternoon, and she took 'em with her this morning to show her students before I had a chance to scan some. I'll get to work on that when she returns this evening.

On a related note, call it the "Vader Virus" or "Imperial Influenza" but lots of people who attended the festivities have gotten sick since coming back from Indianapolis. I've been under the weather with some nasty crap myself ever since Monday (we got back very late Sunday night). It's probably weather-related: we went from first-day warm and sunny, to cold and rain Friday and then snow Saturday afternoon and night. Then again with THAT many people from all over the world in one area, with those kinds of conditions, there ain't no telling what hellish microbes might have been bred across four days. Hey who knows, maybe Star Wars Celebration III will forever emblazon a new illness like Legionnaire's disease did. How about "the Sidious Syndrome"?

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Well, tonight pretty much proved that the man is insane...

"Teachers tell me they love No Child Left Behind."

?!?!?!?!?!?????

Okay Mister President: if you can find any teachers that do think that No Child Left Behind is a boon to their efforts, I'll eat my hat.

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"It's not 'intrusive government' when WE do it."

I remember about ten years ago or so when President Clinton was pushing for the "V-chip" to be installed in all newly manufactured television sets. People like Rush Limbaugh, Donald Wildmon and American Spectator magazine called it for what it was: government sticking its nose into something it had no business being in at all.

My, how the times have changed.

I said this then and I'll say this now: there already IS something controlling what children watch on television and the movies... and they're called parents!! And Mom and Dad together should be an adequate enough gatekeeper against what they will deem as objectionable without any help from the federal government. Or either the Democrats or Republicans.

Yes, I'm aware that this bill doesn't mandate any new technology like what Clinton did in pushing the V-chip. But the mindset is the same: that the American people are inherently incapable of taking care of themselves, so they need "authority figures" in government to be asserted over them for their own good.

Screw 'em.

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"Must Flee Tee Vee": Exorcism on NBC tonight!!

Okay, so NBC's Dateline is going to broadcast a real exorcism tonight. Along with a segment on snake-handlers.

For their own reasons, I'm finding both of these items to be hysterically funny.

Parse that as you will...

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"...And not a rubber nipple in sight!" New trailer for Batman Begins online, sorta...

STILL working on photos from Celebration III to post online! Didn't know I took this many and we've still got Lisa's to look forward to once they're back from the photo lab. That should be this afternoon so I'll probably just wait 'til later tonight to get them ALL up.

In the meantime, orient yer peepers at the new Batman Begins trailer at MTV.com. It's a pretty wonky setup to get it to play though: I had to use Internet Explorer instead of Mozilla because of something it does with Microsoft Media Player, and hopefully there'll be a MUCH better Quicktime version out soon. But it's still plenty to get me stoked: Batman Begins is on the VERY short list of movies that I'm looking forward to seeing this summer (the others being Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The War of the Worlds and some little art-house film that George Lucas is supposed to be releasing sometime next month). Looking at this trailer and the others before it makes me darned thankful that I wasn't one of the poor saps walking around wearing a Batman t-shirt back in 1989 when Tim Burton's movie was out. Which I like Tim Burton but his take on Batman... never quite resonated with me. This Gotham City looks and feels real, like someone really could put on a bat costume and with enough military toys would be perfectly believable. Check out the Scarecrow: LOVE it how he's got a simple burlap sack for a mask! No kitschy cartoonyism here kids. No extreme close-ups of molded-rubber crotches or nipples either: looks like someone kept Joel Schumacher a good cattle-prod's distance from this movie. Anyway, go watch it and enjoy a minute or so of madness and mayhem.

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Is repeating video evidence that Idol is rigged?

Over at Drudge Report right now there's a story about an investigative piece ABC is set to run next week alleging that the producers of American Idol on Fox are manipulating the outcome of the show. This hasn't been the first time this season it's been suggested that "the fix is in" on the number-one television show in America, but so far this is the only major media attention given the matter.

I'm not saying that American Idol is rigged. I'm praying it's not. Hoping that there are some ethical standards being adhered to and that EVERYONE is being given their fair shake at going all the way.

That said, there was something on tonight's broadcast of American Idol that I happened to catch, that has been bugging me all night.

The show's now down to six finalists, the theme this evening was songs that have come out since the year 2000. Before each contestant sang there was a brief set of video clips about that performer: where he or she comes from, comments from family and friends, their singing history, etc. The first contestant to perform tonight was Carrie Underwood, the 22-year old farmgirl from Oklahoma and one of the admitted favorites - if not the admitted favorite - to win the competition.

Now, here's what I've been wondering about...

Back in January, during Underwood's first appearance on the show, there was a brief video montage about her then also. One of the clips was of Underwood taking food to animals on her farm. Dunno why I remembered THAT particular clip, but as best as I can recollect, the show's producers had that same clip in Underwood's video segment tonight.

Why would American Idol's producers go to all the time and trouble to collect this kind of footage about Carrie Underwood, when at the time she was, at best, one of the 24 contestants that would be pared down to the final 12? Did all of the 24 contestants receive this kind of attention from the show that early on? And not just Underwood either: I noticed that Constantine Maroulis got much the same sort of "extra attention" from the show.

This isn't meant to "diss" either Underwood or Maroulis at all. Personally, I think they're both excellent singers and they should do well no matter how well American Idol ends up for them. But let's be honest here: how many times did we really see Anwar Robinson or Mikalah Gordon in the pages of People, or in the footage that Idol's producers released for public consumption? Could it be that maybe some contestants just aren't, ummm... "telegenic" enough to warrant equal consideration? Admittedly, Underwood is pretty and the ladies find Maroulis to be hot, but this is supposed to be a singing competition, not a beauty pageant.

Or maybe I'm seeing too much in this one little quirk. That might be fair to say too. But I guess I'm the kind of guy who doesn't like the deck stacked against anybody, no matter how "less appealing" they look in front of the television cameras. And hate to say it but this season of American Idol has tilted too much toward the fair-faced already.

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The scary thing is, he's showing more public intimacy here than he does with his wife

"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?"

-- 2nd Corinthians 6:14

Real cowboys aren't supposed to be that limp-wristed, are they?

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About 1200 miles or so later ...

Just got back from Star Wars Celebration III in Indianapolis, after a grueling 12-hour trip that's left us pooped. This is the first I've been at at computer at all since this past Wednesday (it being early Monday morning now) and will file a full report later including pictures. In the meantime take a peek at the reports that got filed from the field during the past few days, courtesy of Brian AKA the daft, the daffy and the ever-dapper Darth Larry, who from the looks of it did a FANTASTIC job of relaying the sense of the thing to the folks back home.

Okay, more later. Me sleep now. It'll be good to wake up in the morning and not see a dozen Boba Fetts standing outside my hotel room door...

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Worst nickname for a pope, ever

London's The Sun seems to have been the first to coin this moniker, and I've seen it quite a few other places already...

"Papa Ratzi".

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Forcery update: How to make a grown man (almost) cry

The good news is, everything is backed up. At least twice over.

The bad news is, there's not enough time to reconstruct it all in time.

For the past several days I've been finalizing the work on Forcery, hoping to have it ready in time to bring it to Star Wars Celebration III in Indianapolis this weekend. And it was looking mondo AWESOME!!

And then the hard-drive containing ALL the work that had accummulated over the past week or so crashed and burned.

I can easily reconstitute the film from the material we already have, and the project files from Premiere and After Effects. That is, if we had time enough to do it before we leave. Except there is no time to do it. There's a complete version ready but... I'm not happy with the thought of getting it out there while knowing that it could have been a LOT better finished product.

So Forcery won't be ready in time for Celebration III after all. But that ain't gonna stop me from finally releasing it before this month is out.

Trust me: it'll be a hoot. You ain't lived 'til you've seen how buff George Lucas looks with a lightsaber :-)

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Well, Pope Smoke Cam was fun while it lasted...

Four ballots was all it took for the white smoke to flow. Bells ringing in St. Peter's Square now. No one's come out to say who got elected yet.

EDIT 12:53 PM EST - Well, I was WAY off. Joseph Ratzinger is now Pope Benedict the 16th.

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The "bronze" did bad? San Antonio PD may have violated rights of "Mad Max" fans

Looks like the story about the "Mad Max" fans arrested in Texas posted here yesterday was really something that the media blew way out of proportion. Photos of the event are now getting posted and some of the participants have been sharing the experience online. The initial news reports would have you believe that freaks on motorcycles were weaving in and out of traffic around the tanker, waving machine guns at everyone. But Dholcrist at Ain't It Cool News was one of those jailed and gave his description of the scene...

The articles posted aren't too terribly accurate, we weren't recreating anything, we just dressed up some guys, made some cars and trucks look like they were from the movies, and followed a tanker Chris had hired out to the Drafthouse. Yes, on the back of one of the trucks we had a fake zip-gun made of bright white plastic, but it's a ZIP GUN. Y'know, the quad-barrelled arrow launcher? So we all just traveled in a single line on the highway, under the speed limit. We weren't "surrounding" the tanker truck, we didn't carry "fake machine guns" (the only fake "gun" was the Zip Gun, which was blatantly fake). Vernon Welles was even there (better known as Wez), driving a replica of Max's car.

You can see the fake zip gun in the photos link above. And apparently local law enforcement was notified that this was going down so they shouldn't have been this over-reactive.

All the same, a dozen people spent most of the weekend in jail... and I can't find a damned good reason why they should have been locked up at all. But what really bothers me is what's being widely reported as one of the charges levied against them. From the Chicago Sun-Times website...

'Mad Max' fans mistaken for militia get arrested in Texas

April 19, 2005

SAN ANTONIO -- Eleven "Mad Max" fans armed with fake machine guns were arrested after they surrounded a tanker truck while making their way to a movie marathon in a theatrical convoy.

As the group headed to San Antonio on Saturday, police received several calls from drivers who reported a "militia" surrounding a tanker truck.

Police charged nine people with obstruction of a highway and two others also with possession of prohibited knives.

One of the organizers, Chris Fenner, said the arrests were unfair. He said he didn't know why anyone would have confused the costumed crew re-creating a scene from Mel Gibson's cult classic "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior" with a real threat.

AP

Now, would somebody please tell me what exactly a "prohibited knife" is? Because my Dad and I make knifes for fun and profit, and we know a lot of the people that are real masters of this craft. And this has got to be the first time I've ever heard of possession of a knife being illegal. Yeah I know, it's against the law to bring one onto school grounds in most places nowadays. Even those laws go too far (expelling valedictorians for accidentally leaving a butterknife in a car floorboard...?!) but we're talking about mature adults here, who chose to have some fun in their own way and in a manner that did not stop anyone else from doing the same... and the only thing that was found to be thrown at them was a dubious assumption that if something LOOKS dangerous then it MUST BE dangerous and therefore "prohibited".

Could someone please send me the statute that these guys violated for possessing "prohibited knives"? 'Cuz either this reporter got things WAY wrong, or there's some laws on San Antonio's books that are in apparent violation of individual rights. Or the SAPD overstepped their authority and committed gross negligence and illegally deprived several people of their rights.

Not that I'm THAT big a fan of the "Mad Max" movies, mind ya... but the police department's rationale for arresting these guys doesn't pass the smell test.

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POPE SMOKE CAM: Day #2, first puff

April 19, 2005: first ballot of second day of papal conclave. Nobody's been elected yet...

Am not Catholic, but I'm sorta rooting for Cardinal Francis Arinze to be voted for the post. He seems to be a pretty interesting fella.

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POPE SMOKE CAM: Day #1, first puff

I'm going to try and keep a running chronicle of the smoke from the Vatican as the faithful in St. Peter's Square wait for the puff of white smoke that will signal that a new pope has been elected. Here's what we know of the results of yesterday's ballot, the first during the papal conclave (and this is ALL we know so far)...

I'm seeing lots of "betting pools" and odds being laid down as to which cardinal will get elected. Those are meaningless: NO ONE but the cardinals and their assistants inside the building have any idea what's really going down, and they are effectively cut off from the world. Practically nobody saw Karol Wojtyla getting elected in 1978 before the puff of white smoke came out of that conclave, right? Anyway, it'll be hard to do this during the next few days but I'll try my best to make a record of it.

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Thank the Lord blogging wasn't big during the Clinton years...

"President's Intern" is one of the more clever blogs I've found lately. Yes, I know it's gotta be fake, but no matter which public figure this might be a sly broadside on, it's VERY hard to pull off this kind of parody: it takes a committment that I certainly couldn't apply on this normal a basis (last year's "Andy Kaufman Returns" being another rare example). The funny thing is reading some of the comments left on "President's Intern", I don't know if most of these people are "going along" with the joke, or if they're dead serious! Sorta like Rush Limbaugh's thing about "Uglo-Americans" that he discussed in his first book: one of his more genius gags that proved a point.

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"But the Lord Humongous promised us safe passage through the wasteland!"

Geez I know gas prices are pretty high but we don't literally have to wage war for a tank of juice do we?! From the Associated Press via ABC News:

'Mad Max' Fans Arrested for Re-creation
'Mad Max' Fans, Armed With Fake Guns, Arrested for Surrounding Tanker Truck in Scene Re-creation

The Associated Press

SAN ANTONIO Apr 18, 2005 — Eleven "Mad Max" fans armed with fake machine guns were arrested after they surrounded a tanker truck while making their way to a movie marathon in a theatrical convoy.

As the group headed to San Antonio on Saturday, police received several calls from drivers who reported a "militia" surrounding a tanker truck.

Police charged nine people with obstruction of a highway and two others with possession of prohibited knives in addition to the obstruction charge.
Top Stories

One of the organizers, Chris Fenner, said the arrests were unfair. He said he didn't know why anyone would have confused the costumed crew recreating a scene from "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior" set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland with a real threat.

"I honestly don't know how that could be, because 'Road Warrior' was so over the top," he said.

The movie marathon was canceled after the arrests.

These guys make those of us that dress up like Jedi from the Star Wars movies seem almost normal :-P

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Why did the U.S. government let 1 million illegal aliens go free?

I defy any Bush supporter to tell me that this shouldn't be an impeachable offense against the domestic well-being of the American people.

Here's your "illegal immigrants amnesty" at work, folks.

And... he wants MORE.

Thank God that some REAL Americans with backbone are taking up the responsibilities that our "elected leaders" are too coward to do.

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