25 years ago today...

...John Lennon was shot outside his apartment building in New York City.

I remember my Dad telling me about it the next morning after I woke up. I had no idea who Lennon was at the time: at six years old I'd heard of the Beatles but had no idea who made up the band. So I wasn't old enough to know that Lennon was a very famous guy... but I do remember the incredible outpouring of grief that followed.

Anyway, since today it's been a quarter-century since his death, I felt led to make a note about it here. He was a great musician (even though right now I'm hearing "Happy Christmas (War is Over)" about ten times a day now and am coming to grow really tired of it) and if he'd lived a longer life, we would have seen a lot of amazing work come from him, I've come to think.

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Didn't the Nazis say the same thing when they forced Jews into the Warsaw ghetto?

The mayor of Riviera Beach in Florida is justifying his abuse of the new eminent domain powers that the Supreme Court gave governments by claiming that he's doing this to "rescue and save" the people who are already living in the areas that he wants to clear out, so that hotels and restaurants can be built there instead. "The America we want to live in is one that talks about personal sacrifices that you and that your colleagues talk about every night," Mayor Michael Brown told Sean Hannity earlier this week.

I said this last week, and I'll say it again: our soldiers in Iraq are dying for no reason at all if their purpose for being there is to protect American freedom. Because there is no more freedom in America, not really. When government can take away something that you own, just to give it to someone else that it favors, there no longer exists any basis for personal rights at all. This mayor sounds like someone out of the Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany, to be believing the kinds of things he's saying here.

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He's the King of the world: New Kong may sink Titanic

This goes hand-in-hand (or should I say hand-in-paw?) with something that I'll be posting, hopefully by tomorrow. Let's just say that Yours Truly has gone more than a little ape over the past day or two. But in the meantime, Drudge Report is saying today that some Hollywood suits are predicting that Peter Jackson's King Kong might break the all-time records for top-grossing movie set by Titanic when it came out in December of '97. "Grown men around me were crying," one insider said: "Yes, I think this will do Titanic numbers. It is going to be a huge movie."

I've been thinking that for about a week now too, wondering if King Kong may surprise everyone the way Titanic did. I remember a lot of people were saying back in '96-'97 that Titanic was going to be a disaster, and look how that turned out: about as perfect a movie as you can get. Well, I'm hoping that King Kong does climb to the top of the heap, and I'll tell ya why: I want to see James Cameron continue the tradition of sending a congratulatory card that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas started. Maybe on his it'll have Kong standing at the bow of the H.M.S. Titanic holding Ann Darrow with her arms spread out a'la DiCaprio and Winslett: He'll be the NEW king of the world!! Peter Jackson's earned that kind of honor, don't ya think? :-)

Okay, back to work. Expect more monkeyshines on this blog later.

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Power-mad Xbox 360

CNET.com's Will Greenwald is reporting that the Xbox 360 is a severe hog for electrical power, requiring more than twice the juice that the original needed. There's some neat stats in his post that might interest you.

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10 Marines die a meaningless death in Fallujah

10 Marines killed and 11 more injured from a roadside bomb in Fallujah, the Marine Corps just announced.

They died for nothing. Ten years from now it's going to be apparent to everybody that more than two thousand - at last count - American servicemen and women perished for no reason at all. Somebody is probably going to blast back at me for saying that, with the usual "They volunteered!" or "They are defending our freedoms!" or the standard canned answer. Someone is likely to say that I'm "a bitter person" for even saying all of this.

Yeah, I am bitter. Bitter at the old men - the chief among whom never saw real military service to begin with - who send young men to die for their own flights of fantasy. And yeah, those young Americans did volunteer: to do professionally what every American is supposed to be doing anyway, namely upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States of America. They did not volunteer to be pawns and cannon fodder for the twisted games of damaged little madmen. And despite word to the contrary, they are not over there "defending our freedom". For one thing, we don't have that much freedom over here left to begin with (hell, even blogs like this one are now being threatened by Congress). For another, they are NOT being used in a way that defends our freedom and sovereignty here. I could think of any number of ways that they could be doing that: putting them on our border with Mexico would be the biggest among them.

Iraq is a doomed country, no matter what the pundits are saying. It only even really stayed one united country because the government or dictator that was running the place at any given time used military force to keep everyone in line. Without someone like Saddam Hussein threatening everybody to keep the peace, Iraq will go the way of Yugoslavia: another country that was cobbled together from several other nations and cultures. That's not a defense of Saddam by any stretch, just a statement of historical evidence. In fact, I would say that if you want a clear picture of what we have in store for us in a post-Saddam Iraq, study what happened in Yugoslavia after Tito died. Then you'll understand why imposing a democracy in Iraq is going to ultimately fail miserably. Any "good news" coming out of Iraq right now is not much more than a panacea. The only way the place is going to maintain even a semblance of order is if another strong military presence is occupying the country. And that's the United States. We have become like Tito and Saddam, and if we pull out - either now or later - the resulting chaos is going to be on our own heads. It would have been a far better thing if we had not gotten involved at all, and let the Iraqi people solve their own problem, as best as they can, without any outside intervention.

But, we're stuck with it. And there's only going to be more meaningless deaths like these to report. Not out of some "grim satisfaction" no matter what the warhawks might say, but out of horrid loathing as to what's happening to our own. America wasn't intended to be an empire... so why are we wasting lives trying to be one now?

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The Nature Boy gets busted

The Smoking Gun has the mugshot photo of pro-wrestling legend "Nature Boy" Ric Flair after he surrendered to the police stemming from his allegedly assaulting a motorist in Charlotte. Chad and I were talking about this the other day and he posits the following observation...

Saw that in the Charlotte paper. His quote in the Charlotte Observer was, "As usual, I will be exonerated." Which begs the question, how often does the "Nature Boy" get charged if it's "usual" for him to be
exonerated?

On a somewhat related aside, after almost twenty years of hearing it boasted about from Flair but never understanding the context, it was only two days ago that it occurred to me just what it was he was referring to whenever he mentioned "Space Mountain". Sheesh... and in front of all those kiddies too! Anyway if you want to know more about the Nature Boy there's a pretty colorful article about him at Wikipedia that includes some classic photos of him.

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Giving them the monkey business

KongisKing.net this evening is making note of a new Flash site guaranteed to make you chuckle. Head over to Kong Kicks Ass and unleash the king of Skull Island on Tom Cruise, George W. Bush, and even yourself. Be warned though: the content is more or less really PG-13 in tone. But if you don't mind that, this is great for a few laughs.

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30,000!!!

Break out the dancing chimps: sometime in the past few minutes this blog had its 30,000th visitor since I first installed the counter almost two years ago. Can't believe I've had so many hits in that time. Just a few months ago it was somewhere in the 15,000 range, and now we're all the way to 30,000! To whoever was visitor #30,000, thank you... along with everyone else who's been a faithful visitor or otherwise stumbled onto my humble blog :-)

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So Bush is saying that the U.S. won't "run" from Iraq...

...which is kinda funny because Bush has done nothing but run from everything else - especially responsibility - his entire life.

What he really means is that he won't run away from sending more American lives to die needlessly, while he stays in absolute safety and comfort over here. For him to move away from that would constitute "running" in his mind.

See, this is why this blog and those of other independent-minded writers are so important: we're keeping things in their proper perspective, so that future generations won't be convinced that EVERYONE in this era only believed what their politicians told them to think.

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Best Buy's dirty tricks latest in Xbox 360 rollout mess

I won't buy top-of-the-line new tech right out the gate for one good reason: the stuff is rarely anywhere near 100% reliable. Better to wait a year or two and let everyone else "beta test" it so the wrinkles get worked out. Well, that reason and because it'll cost a lot less if you wait for it too. Besides, we got an Xbox last year for Christmas, and I haven't yet run out of thrills with that trusty black box. Our Xbox isn't going to be moving over for a successor for a long time to come.

But I can't disparage those that do go gunning for the newest tech first. Seeing the pics of Bill Gates handing out the first Xbox 360 to a customer last week, I couldn't help but smile at seeing how giddy that game player looked to have his grubby lil' paws on one of the coveted systems. That kind of enthusiasm has been dampered in the week since though, first by reports that a lot of Xbox 360 systems have been crashing (seems to have something to do with the power supply overheating, so maybe that's somethinge readily fixable). Then came reports of 360s selling in the thousands of dollars on eBay - I saw one system going for $10,000 - because of the severe shortage of the system (but the good news is that more Xbox 360s are on the way so you may have a good chance yet of landing one for Christmas). Now comes this: word that several Best Buy stores wouldn't let anyone buy an Xbox 360 without first forking over money for extra hardware and accessories... like, a lot of money. From the Inquirer:

BEST BUY HAS ADMITTED some of its employees stepped over the mark when it launched the Xbox 360.
People who queued up in the Pacific Northwest lined up for hours in the cold to get one, clutching adverts promising list price, got a rude surprise.

Most of the people who queued up went away empty handed, because the advertised list price was not what they actually had in stock.

Best Buy would not sell them for the advertised price, but only with a bundle that just about doubled the cost. Games, controllers, cables, and other high margin knick-knacks so if you didn't pay $800 you couldn't get an Xbox 360...

An internal Best Buy memorandum seen by the INQUIRER and sent on Tuesday 11/15/2005 at 8:02am to several mailing lists at Best Buy, mostly managers in the Pacific Northwest, instructed stores on what was to be done.

The mail was sent a week before the launch date, and before the ads hit the press.

The memo contained five 'quick notes' and a shorter note at the end.

"We will be selling our units in packages," the memo said. "Each store should hold back three to four units of each model for those customers who put up an argument about being able to only buy the unit. Everything else will be sold in bundles. This keeps us in alignment with everyone's expectations."

Sales managers, the memo continued, would be in charge of the 360 launch and stores should use the "very best" sales people for the launch. It said that stores' future allocations depended on attachment sales "so you need to get it right or you will pay for it in December when new allocations of product are distributed". Best Buy was advertising a nine AM opening time on the 22nd and stores had to stick to that time. Best Buy had such low quantities that it needed to be careful with the advertising. The memo said that if stores opened early and sold all their units before that time, it could be in trouble for false advertising.

Sales people were told to sell up around the Xbox 360 using the "halo effect". Customers wanting 360s would also need HD TVs, and surround systems. It concluded: "Folks, it's like milk and cookies"...

Y'know, part of the fun in trying to find something like an Xbox 360 is the hunt itself. And when you find one there should be a sense of accomplishment... but only when everything has been fair and equitable across the board. Best Buy was exceedingly dishonest in following this policy. They ruined the fun for a lot of people as a result. I don't know if I'll ever buy an Xbox 360 but after hearing about this I can assure you: it won't come from Best Buy.

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Davey Jones AKA Cap'n Cthulhu is coming: Trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is online

Avast ye scurvy seadogs! Disney has just put online the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Looks pretty gnarly. The squid-faced pirate is the legendary Davey Jones, who looks, sounds and moves a LOT better than I envisioned he would after seeing that concept drawing of him awhile back. I loved the original, can't wait to see what's in store for this next installment (and the one after that :-).

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Wanna see Bill Cosby and Harvey Keitel driving around in an ambulance?!

I was just checking the TV listings for this evening and if you've got the Fox Movie Channel and haven't "gotten" into Lost yet, you got a real treat tonight. At 8 p.m. EST they're running Mother, Jugs & Speed, starring Bill Cosby, Harvey Keitel, and Raquel Welch. It's a nice little gem from 1976 about a private ambulance company that's fighting both a competitor for a contract from the city, and its own internal conflicts. Bill Cosby is "Mother": the hardened veteran driver who flaunts all the rules in the book (and has a penchant for scaring nuns while driving his rig). Harvey Keitel is "Speed", and that handle doesn't necessarily reflect how fast he drives either (he's a suspended cop suspected of drug dealing). Raquel Welch is "Jugs": the outfit's dispatcher who wants to work the ambulances like the big boys. Look for more familiar faces like Larry Hagman and Dick Butkus among the cast. It can be a sometimes disturbing movie, especially if you're a fan of Bill Cosby. Be warned: this is the darkest comedy that the Cos has ever done in his career that I can think of. But it's also a pretty darned hilarious movie too: the scene where the lady's stretcher is going out of control down the street cracks me up every time I watch it! Plus, this movie absolutely has one of the all-time funkiest theme songs. Just wait 'til you hear it, you'll have "DANCE!" in your head all night.

If you're still wondering if this movie might be for you, here's Mother, Jugs & Speed's opening monologue from Mr. Fishbine, the owner of the company...

"I don’t have to tell you people times are tough. You read the papers. The country’s going to Hell. Now you take inflation, recession, welfare. There’s nothing we can do about that. But thanks to muggings, malnutrition, assassination, and disease, we got a chance to make a buck! I can see that some of you men must be shocked by that statement, but I didn’t write the rules of life myself, no sir! The cripple, the junkie, the wounded, and the dying. Society calls them all worthless. They’re not worthless. Not to us! To us each one is worth $42.50 plus 50 cents a mile, and let’s not forget it! When it comes to realizing that people in distress will jump into the first rig that shows up, well, then that’s when the drive and enthusiasm of you men will make the difference! But there’s another group out there, men... and I will not dignify the Unity Ambulance Company my mentioning its name, but they want our territory. Our sick! Your jobs! But we’re not gonna let them do it to us, are we men? You bet we’re not! No sir!"

(Jugs tells them they've got a call about a woman in labor)

"A woman in labor. What could be more eloquent than that? Well, it looks like life has it’s own little ways of summing up the situation, doesn’t it men? Gentlemen? The F&B Ambulance Company is rolling!"

I've heard this movie is a rare look at what driving an ambulance is REALLY like. So check it out if you can :-)

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C.S. Lewis did not want live-action Narnia movie

The BBC is reporting about a 1959 letter by C.S. Lewis wherein the author stated he did not want a live-action movie of his Narnia books to be produced. An animated version would be another matter but not if it were done by Disney... which Lewis slammed for its "vulgarity"! Lewis further considered that a human-operated Aslan would be "blasphemy".

Gotta wonder what Lewis would think of this coming month's movie, since he was writing decades before the advent of computer-generated imagery.

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I pity da fool who don't read this story!!

The Sun over in Great Britain has a great article about the return of Mr. T to the public eye. For the past ten years or so T hasn't been in the spotlight much, mostly because he fought hard (and won) against lymphatic cancer. But now T is set to have the biggest time of his life since he first exploded onto the scene in the early Eighties...

A battle against cancer forced The A Team star to take a break from acting 10 years ago, but now he's healthy and back with a new American reality show, a part in upcoming movie Rocky VI and even his own comic book.

Mr T told us: "I call all this stuff my resurrection, my second coming.

"There's a new generation out there and they like me and I'm honoured by that and grateful to God.

"We are going to start filming Rocky VI soon, with me as Clubber Lang again, and we're also starting work right now on my new show - which is called I Pity The Fool.

"Unlike all the other reality programmes, it is going to be about helping people. We're not going to be eating worms or swapping wives.

"For example a lady might write to me saying she's having trouble at a car dealership, because she's the only female employee and the men are harassing her. So I'll go in and straighten things out.

"I learn about the situation, observe for a couple of days and then call the guys into a meeting and give them the Mr T rap - 'I tell you fools, you don't disrespect no lady. My mum is a lady.'

"I don't get physical with anyone but I talk to them man to man and brother to brother."

The reality show bit I think is pretty ironic, 'cuz it made me think back to that commercial for the Oregon lottery from five years ago ("T needs a foot rub! Who's gonna give Mr. T a foot rub?"). I dunno about the whole idea behind a new Rocky movie but it'll be great seeing T returning to the role that first propelled him to fame. It's a nice long article and it shows a lot of the legendary soft-hearted nature that Mr. T became renowned for as much as his mohawk and gold chains... which he's not wearing anymore.

But I can't end this without first posting my all-time favorite photo of Mr. T. Circa 1984 at the White House...

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Good news: Diebold Voting may be leaving North Carolina

Diebold - one of THE MOST EVIL companies in American history - may be leaving North Carolina and taking its damnable voting machines with it. A judge is refusing to protect the company from having to release the source code behind its voting software.

When it comes to voting there MUST be a paper trail, something that can be readily tabulated by hand if need be. The bastitches at Diebold have - maybe even intentionally - been undermining the sanctity of the ballot box all over the country. There's no telling how much damage they've done through their computerized voting systems. No doubt there'll be some people who'll act all smug about that, but those people aren't even real Americans in my book. Diebold isn't a real American company either. May all their machines meet the business end of a sledgehammer, and not soon enough.

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Superman returns... through Development Hell

The Agony Booth has an extremely detailed synopsis of the bizarre saga of the last 15-some years regarding the attempt to make a new Superman movie. The story begins in 1987 with what went wrong on Superman IV on through the mid-90s, up to 2004. Among the story's more insane moments: Jim Carrey as Brainiac, Warner Brothers' Jon Peters not knowing who "this Kal-El guy" is (?!?), attempts to strip Superman of his ability to fly (?!?!?!?), and more lunacy than you might be prepared to readily believe. A definite must-read for anyone who's interested the least bit in the movie production process.

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Man caught stealing $200,000 worth of LEGOs

A 40-year old man is sitting in jail in Oregon after being caught with more than $200,000 worth of stolen LEGO bricks...

To haul away the evidence, agents working for the U.S. Postal Inspector said they had to back a 20-foot truck to William Swanberg's house in Reno, Nev., carting away mountains of the multicolored bricks...

Target officials contacted police after noticing the same pattern at their stores in the five western states. A Target security guard stopped Swanberg at a Portland-area store on Nov. 17, after he bought 10 boxes of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon set.

In his parked car, detectives found 56 of the Star Wars set, valued at $99 each, as well as 27 other Lego sets. In a laptop found inside Swanberg's car, investigators also found the addresses of numerous Target stores in the Portland area, their locations carefully plotted on a mapping software.

Looks like the charges are seriously stacked against this guy. Prosecutors are no doubt building a strong case against him...

Okay, jokes aside, my mind does boggle at the thought of fifty-six Millennium Falcon LEGO sets. Lisa got me one this past Christmas, and it had enough bricks in it that it took me the longest time of any LEGO set to put together:about 7 hours, after the 6.5 it took me to finish the LEGO AT-AT walker. I just can't comprehend having fifty-six of these things laying around. Inside one car no less, too. To say nothing of all those LEGOs he had in his house.

This is gonna be one story I won't be able to get out of my head for a long time to come, I think :-)

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